“The Mother Lode?”
Blumpitty’s pale visage relaxed to something remotely like a smile as he answered, “But he don’t.”
“I suppose,” said Hildegarde, “all these people in one way or another hope to find it—the Mother Lode, you know.”
Blumpitty’s vague eyes came back from the snowcapped range of the Cascades, and dwelt with a ruminant sympathy upon the passing faces. “Ya-as, they think they’re headin’ straight fur it. But they ain’t.”
“Nobody on all this ship, or on all the other ships is really heading straight but you.”
“Wa-al”—he seemed to wish to be strictly, punctiliously accurate—“I got to go to Snow Gulch first.”
“But after that?”
“Ya-as. After that!” And Blumpitty went to the third breakfast-table on his way to millionairedom and the Mother Lode.
The girl lay back in her long chair and stared at the crowd, thinking how strange it was that Hildegarde Mar should be among them, and even while she wondered the sense of strangeness was wearing away.
And these purblind, trustful creatures, filled with their pathetic hopes, was it of them she had been afraid? She smiled at the absurdity. They were rough and crude, but not in the least alarming—except at a distance. She pondered this, catching glimpses of a truth of wider application. When the motley throng had stood without the gate struggling and crying to be allowed on board this enchanted ship, when Hildegarde had stood apart from them, not enlightened by sharing in their lot, she had had her moments of misgiving, or rather she had been seized by a quite childish panic.