The talk swung back to days on the trail and finally brought up on David. They rehearsed the tragic story, conned over the details that had begun to form into narrative sequence as in the time-worn lay of a minstrel. Bella and Glen asked all the old questions that had once been asked by Susan and Daddy John, and heard the same answers, leaning to catch them while the firelight played on the strained attention of their faces. With the night pressing close around them, and the melancholy, sea-like song sweeping low from the forest, a chill crept upon them, and their lost comrade became invested with the unreality of a spirit. Dead in that bleak and God-forgotten land, or captive in some Indian stronghold, he loomed a tragic phantom remote from them and their homely interests like a historical figure round which legend has begun to accumulate. The awed silence that had fallen was broken by Courant rising and walking away toward the diggings. This brought their somber pondering to an end. Bella and Glen picked up the sleeping children and went to their tent, and Susan, peering beyond the light, saw her man sitting on a stone, dark against the broken silver of the stream. She stole down to him and laid her hand on his shoulder. He started as if her touch scared him, then saw who it was and turned away with a gruff murmur. The sound was not encouraging, but the wife, already so completely part of him that his moods were communicated to her through the hidden subways of instinct, understood that he was in some unconfessed trouble. "What's the matter, Low?" she asked, bending to see his face. He turned it toward her, met the penetrating inquiry of her look, and realized his dependence on her, feeling his weakness but not caring just then that he should be weak. "Nothing," he answered. "Why do they harp so on David?" "Don't you like them to?" she asked in some surprise. He took a splinter from the stone and threw it into the water, a small silvery disturbance marking its fall. "There's nothing more to be said. It's all useless talk. We can do no more than we've done." "Shall I tell them you don't like the subject, not to speak of it again?" He glanced at her with sudden suspicion: "No, no, of course not. They've a right to say anything they please. But it's a waste of time, there's nothing but guessing now. What's the use of guessing and wondering all through the winter. Are they going to keep on that way till the spring?" "I'll tell them not to," she said as a simple solution of the difficulty. "I'll tell them it worries you." "Don't," he said sharply. "Do you hear? Don't. Do you want to act like a fool and make me angry with you?"