“I was too sick to go any farther. I wanted to hide somewhere, to get away from it all, and anyway, till Sunday was over. It was all to be published on Sunday, you know. Everything was ruined. My voice was gone, too. I saw those steps in the dark and climbed up and crept under the trees. I was terribly tired, and it was very quiet up there. I don’t remember much more.” As the light of another lamp flashed through the window he could not bear to look at her, but tightened his arms about her and bowed his face on her wet head. “Oh God, dearest,” he whispered, “there can’t be any hell worse than what I’ve been in for the last two days.” She made no response, but lay passively against him. When the carriage stopped at the Garcia gate, and he told her they were home, she made no attempt to move, and he saw she was unconscious. He lifted her out and carried her up the steps. The door opened as he ascended and revealed the Garcia family in the aperture. “Is she dead?” screamed young Mrs. Garcia, as she saw the limp figure in his arms. “No, but sick. You must get a doctor at once.” “Oh, how awful she looks!” cried the young woman as she caught sight of the white face against his shoulder. “What are you going to do with her?” “Take her upstairs now, and then get a doctor and get her cured, and when she’s well, marry her.” EPILOGUE CHAPTER I THE PRIMA DONNA “And thou Beside me singing in the wilderness.” --OMAR KHAYYAM. The plant of the Silver Star Mine lay scattered along the edge of a mountain river on the site of one of the camps of forty-nine. Where the pioneers had scratched the surface with their picks, their successors had torn wounds in the Sierra’s mighty flank. Where once the miners’ shouts had broken the quiet harmonies of stirred pine boughs, and singing river, the throb of engines now beat on the air, thick with the dust, noisy with the strife of toiling men. It was a morning in the end of May. The mountain wall was dark against the rising sun; tall fir and giant pine stood along its crest in inky silhouette thrown out by a background of gold leaf. Here and there, far and aërial in the clear, cool dawn, a white peak of the high Sierra floated above the shadows, a rosy pinnacle. The air was chill and faintly touched with woodland odors. The expectant hush of Nature awaiting the miracle of sunrise, held this world of huge, primordial forms, grouped in colossal indifference round the swarm of men who delved in its rock-ribbed breast.