'You ain't going to start a store yourself?'
'No, I have a young mate; I work and he makes journeys backwards and forwards to Sacramento; he brings up anything the storekeepers order—flour, bacon, spirits, tea and sugar; it more than pays for the keep of the horses and for our grub, though I never take anything like full loads.'
'You are in luck,' the man said; 'it is the grub that swallows up the earnings. A man wants to find a quarter of an ounce a day to pay his way.'
'How long has this saloon been up?'
'It came five weeks ago—a few days after the others; and they are just taking dust in by handfuls, you bet. Men would come and pay if they didn't get anything for their money but what they can see. That's a daisy, isn't it?'—and he nodded towards the bar. 'We are just proud of her; there ain't such another in the hull diggings.'
'Does she belong to this part of the country, or has she come from the East?'
'She is a Britisher—at least, the old man is, and I suppose his daughter is the same. Well, so long,'—and the miner strode out of the saloon.
CHAPTER XXI
Captain Hampton sat for some time longer watching what was going on. He saw that the girl did not herself serve, but generally superintended the two lads who were serving the drinks, receiving the money and weighing the gold dust that served as currency, a pinch of gold being the price for a glass of liquor of any kind. Two men, one of whom he had recognised at once as being Truscott, looked after the boys attending to the guests at the tables. Now that he obtained a full sight of the girl, he saw that, striking as was the likeness to Dorothy, there were points of difference; her hair was darker, her complexion less clear and brilliant, her expression more serious and far less variable than Dorothy's and lacking the sunshine that was one of the latter's chief charms. Still, he could well understand that one could be mistaken for the other at first sight, especially when dressed precisely alike, and with the face shadowed by a veil. After sitting half an hour longer he returned to the waggon.