"Sure," the engineer rasped, as if annoyed by their ignorance. "Ain't you never heard of her? Well, her right name, so they tell, is Lily Meredith. She owns the place called the High Light. Everybody knows her. She's square, even if she does run a dance hall and rents a gamblin' joint. She don't stand for nothin' crooked, Lily don't. She pays her way, and asks no favors. Go down and tell her you want men. They all go there, some time or another." He stooped over to inspect the fire under the small boiler he was working, and straightened up before he went on. Through the black coating on his face, he appeared thoughtful. "Best time to see The Lily and get action is at night. All the day-shift men hang around the camp then, and, besides that, they've got a new batch of placer ground about a mile and a half over the other side, and lots of them fellers come over. Want to go to-day?" The partners looked at each other, as if consulting, and then Dick said: "Yes. I think the sooner the better." Bells Park pulled the visor of his greasy little cap lower over his eyes, and stepped to the door. "Come out here onto the yard," he said, and they followed. "Go down to the Rattler, then bear off to the right. The trail starts in back of the last shanty on the right-hand side. You see that gap up yonder? Not the big one, but the narrow one." He pointed with a grimy hand. "Well, you go right through that and drop down, and you'll see the camp below you. It's a stiff climb, but the trail's good, and it's just about two miles over there. It's so plain you can make it home by moonlight." Without further ceremony or advice, he returned into the boiler-room, and the partners, after but slight preparations, began their journey. It was a stiff climb! The sun had set, and the long twilight was giving way to darkness when they came down the trail into the upper end of the camp. Some embryo artist was painfully overworking an accordion, while a dog rendered melancholy by the unmusical noise, occasionally accompanied him with prolonged howls. A belated ore trailer, with the front wagon creaking under the whine of the brakes and the chains of the six horses clanking, lurched down from a road on the far side of the long, straggling street, and passed them, the horses' heads hanging as if overwork had robbed them of all stable-going spirit of eagerness. The steady, booming "clumpety-clump! clumpety-clump!" of a stamp-mill on a shoulder of a hill high above the camp, drowned the whir and chirp of night insects, and from the second story of a house they passed they heard the crude banging of a piano, and a woman's strident voice wailing, "She may have seen better da-a-ys," with a mighty effort to be pathetic.