The few people of the country knew of course that Jim Sholto had established himself here with his three children for the purpose of smelting the ore in a small way, but Jim had built his shacks a quarter of a mile back from the river to avoid the inconvenient observation of the chance traveller. Jim and his two sons excavated the ore and burned it in half a dozen little furnaces of porcelain and brick, the materials for which they had brought in with immense difficulty. The venture was not highly regarded in the country. The expense of bringing in supplies was too great. They worked like beavers, it was said, for a net return no greater than day labourer's wages. Such unremitting industry accused the easy-going ways of the North.
On a brilliant afternoon in July Kitty Sholto was redding up the kitchen in the larger of the two shacks. There was a cloud on her charming face. She slapped the enamel-ware plates on the shelf with a malicious satisfaction in the clatter, and cast the dish-towels over the line, as if they had individually offended her.
Kitty was twenty years old. In her face were combined elements of gentleness and piquancy, a rare association and provoking to the other sex. The piquancy was due to her long eyes, green-gray in colour, and placed a thought obliquely in her head. Green in eyes is thought of in connection with feline qualities. There was nothing of that sort about Kitty. All the rest was gentleness. She had a small, straight nose, and an adorable mouth that turned up at the corners. Her hair, darkest brown in colour, was of the crinkly sort that reaches out tendrils. She had a soft voice, with an odd, hushed thrill in it that was all her own, and a soft and ready laugh. She was not at all the kind of girl to be given to ill-humours.
Sweeping the crumbs over the door-sill, she stood broom in hand leaning against the jamb. In one swift cast around she took in the whole scene, the exquisite, limpid sky, the polished malachite of the deciduous foliage, the rich bottle-green of the pines, the brook whipping itself white on the stones. She took it all in, and the line between her dark eyebrows deepened as if the loveliness of nature were an added affront.
Down the trail from the excavations the four ponies came plodding, each laden with a double wooden bucket of ore. Bill, the younger of Kitty's two brothers, walked behind, whistling vociferously, and tickling the rearmost beast with a switch. Bill was a tall, strong youth of twenty-two, a black Scotchman with a gleaming smile. Dumping the contents of the buckets on the little mountain of ore before the other shack, with a flick of his switch he sent the ponies trotting back one by one for another load.
Bill, pausing to fill his pipe, grinned amiably at his sister. Kitty's brothers adored her, and teased her remorselessly. "Hello, sis!" he said. "What's biting you?"
"Nothing!" she said quickly.
"You look as if the cat was dead and the milk turned," he said in the humorous style that brothers affect.
"There is no cat and I haven't tasted milk in a year and a half," said Kitty sharply.
"Take example from me!" sang Bill. "Dog-tooth Bill, the sunshine of Milburn Gulch!"