to the wood-pile just now there was the THIRD one sittin' up on a log as
plain as I see you. Tell 'e what folks ken laugh--but that's just what
Jim Filgee saw the night before he made the big strike!"

They were both smiling, yet with an underlying credulity and seriousness
as singularly pathetic as it seemed incongruous to their years and
intelligence. Small wonder, however, that in their occupation and
environment--living daily in an atmosphere of hope, expectation, and
chance, looking forward each morning to the blind stroke of a pick that
might bring fortune--they should see signs in nature and hear mystic
voices in the trackless woods that surrounded them. Still less strange
that they were peculiarly susceptible to the more recognized diversions
of chance, and were gamblers on the turning of a card who trusted to the
revelation of a shovelful of upturned earth.

It was quite natural, therefore, that they should return from their
abstract form of divination to the table and their cards. But they were
scarcely seated before they heard a crackling step in the brush outside,
and the free latch of their door was lifted. A younger member of the
camp entered. He uttered a peevish "Halloo!" which might have passed
for a greeting, or might have been a slight protest at finding the door
closed, drew the stool from which Uncle Jim had just risen before the
fire, shook his wet clothes like a Newfoundland dog, and sat down. Yet
he was by no means churlish nor coarse-looking, and this act was rather
one of easy-going, selfish, youthful familiarity than of rudeness. The
cabin of Uncles Billy and Jim was considered a public right or "common"
of the camp. Conferences between individual miners were appointed there.
"I'll meet you at Uncle Billy's" was a common tryst. Added to this was a
tacit claim upon the partners' arbitrative powers, or the equal right to
request them to step outside if the interviews were of a private nature.