There appeared to be no guard kept, and the camp was certainly not a very new one, apparently having been made there several weeks before.
Emboldened by his discovery, the gold-hunter crept nearer and nearer, and then could see that the men were all masked.
This struck him as being a very remarkable circumstance, indeed, since they were clad like miners, some of them wearing beards that came below their masks. All were armed thoroughly.
They were eating their supper as Andrew Seldon looked at them.
Gaining a point of observation still nearer, the gold-hunter obtained a view of the camp-fire apart from the others. A comfortable little cabin was just behind the fire, and a rustic bench had been made near it.
A blanket hung over the door of the tiny cabin, and about the fire was the evidence of a supper recently eaten, for a cup, tin plate, and knives, with the remains of a meal, were upon a rock that served as a table.
Upon the rustic seat sat one whose presence there was a great surprise to Andrew Seldon.
"By Heaven, it is a woman!" he almost cried aloud in his amazement.
Then he determined to get a still nearer view, and after surveying the position, he decided that he could do so by passing around to the edge of the cliff and creeping along it to a point not sixty feet away.
As he, after very cautious work, reached the point he sought, some forty feet from the one at the camp-fire, gazing upon her he muttered to himself: