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“What?”

“I’ll come, after a bit, and see you. Quit foolin’ now. If you’d only have come here like yourself–like–like–a white man.”

“The old man,” interrupted Lance, “would have just passed me on to the summit. I couldn’t have played the lost fisherman on him at this time of year.”

“Ye could have been stopped at the Crossing by high water, you silly,” said the girl. “It was.” This grammatical obscurity referred to the stage coach.

“Yes, but I might have been tracked to this cabin. And look here, Flip,” he said, suddenly straightening himself, and lifting the girl’s face to a level with his own, “I don’t want you to lie any more for me. It ain’t right.”

“All right. Ye needn’t go to the pit, then, and I won’t come.”

“Flip!”

“And here’s Dad coming. Quick!”

Lance chose to put his own interpretation on this last adjuration. The resisting little hand was now lying quite limp on his shoulder, He drew her brown, bright face near his own, felt her spiced breath on his lips, his cheeks, his hot eyelids, his swimming eyes, kissed her, hurriedly replaced his wig and blanket, and dropped beside the fire with the tremulous laugh of youth and innocent first passion. Flip had withdrawn to the window, and was looking out upon the rocking pines.

“He don’t seem to be coming,” said Lance, with a half-shy laugh.

“No,” responded Flip demurely, pressing her hot oval cheek against the wet panes; “I reckon I was mistaken. You’re sure,” she added, looking resolutely another way, but still trembling like a magnetic needle toward Lance, as he moved slightly before the fire, “you’re SURE you’d like me to come to you?”

“Sure, Flip?”

“Hush!” said Flip, as this reassuring query of reproachful astonishment appeared about to be emphasized by a forward amatory dash of Lance’s; “hush! he’s coming this time, sure.”

It was, indeed, Fairley, exceedingly wet, exceedingly bedraggled, exceedingly sponged out as to color, and exceedingly profane. It appeared that there was, indeed, a tree that had fallen in the “run,” but that, far from diverting the overflow into the pit, it had established “back water,” which had forced another outlet. All this might have been detected at once by any human intellect not distracted by correspondence with strangers, and enfeebled by habitually scorning the intellect of its own progenitor. This reckless selfishness had further only resulted in giving “rheumatics” to that progenitor, who now required the external administration of opodeldoc to his limbs, and the internal administration of whiskey. Having thus spoken, Mr. Fairley, with great promptitude and infantine simplicity, at once bared two legs of entirely different colors and mutely waited for his daughter to rub them. If Flip did this all unconsciously, and with the mechanical dexterity of previous habit, it was because she did not quite understand the savage eyes and impatient gestures of Lance in his encompassing wig and blanket, and because it helped her to voice her thought.

“Ye’ll never be able to take yer watch at the diamond pit to-night, Dad,” she said; “and I’ve been reck’nin’ you might set the squaw there instead. I can show her what to do.”

But to Flip’s momentary discomfiture, her father promptly objected. “Mebbee I’ve got suthin’ else for her to do. Mebbee I may have my secrets, too–eh?” he said, with dark significance, at the same time administering a significant nudge to Lance, which kept up the young man’s exasperation. “No, she’ll rest yer a bit just now. I’ll set her to watchin’ suthin’ else, like as not, when I want her.” Flip fell into one of her suggestive silences. Lance watched her earnestly, mollified by a single furtive glance from her significant eyes; the rain dashed against the windows, and occasionally spattered and hissed in the hearth of the broad chimney, and Mr. David Fairley, somewhat assuaged by the internal administration of whiskey, grew more loquacious. The genius of incongruity and inconsistency which generally ruled his conduct came out with freshened vigor under the gentle stimulation of spirit. “On an evening like this,” he began, comfortably settling himself on the floor beside the chimney, “ye might rig yerself out in them new duds and fancy fixin’s that that Sacramento shrimp sent ye, and let your own flesh and blood see ye. If that’s too much to do for your old dad, ye might do it to please that digger squaw as a Christian act.” Whether in the hidden depths of the old man’s consciousness there was a feeling of paternal vanity in showing this wretched aborigine the value and importance of the treasure she was about to guard, I cannot say. Flip darted an interrogatory look at Lance, who nodded a quiet assent, and she flew into the inner room. She did not linger on the details of her toilet, but reappeared almost the next moment in her new finery; buttoning the neck of her gown as she entered the room, and chastely stopping at the window to characteristically pull up her stocking. The peculiarity of her situation increased her usual shyness; she played with the black and gold beads of a handsome necklace,–Lance’s last gift,–as the merest child might; her unbuckled shoe gave the squaw a natural opportunity of showing her admiration and devotion by insisting upon buckling it, and gave Lance, under that disguise, an opportunity of covertly kissing the little foot and ankle in the shadow of the chimney; an event which provoked slight hysterical symptoms in Flip, and caused her to sit suddenly down in spite of the remonstrances of her parent. “Ef you can’t quit gigglin’ and squirmin’ like an Injin baby yourself, ye’d better git rid o’ them duds,” he ejaculated with peevish scorn.