Even when the days marched past,
mustering themselves in weekly and monthly platoons and Bill still
remained in the Klappan, she experienced no dreary leadenness of soul.
Her time passed pleasantly enough.
Early in June came a brief wire from Station Six. Three weeks later
the Free Gold Mining Company set up a mild ripple of excitement along
Broad Street by exhibiting in their office window a forty-pound heap of
coarse gold; raw, yellow gold, just as it had come from the sluice.
Every day knots of men stood gazing at the treasure. The Granville
papers devoted sundry columns to this remarkably successful enterprise
of its local business men. Bill had forwarded the first clean-up.
And close on the heels of this--ten days later, to be exact--he came
home.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE BOMB
"You great bear," Hazel laughed, in the shelter of his encircling arms.
"My, it's good to see you again."
She pushed herself back a little and surveyed him admiringly, with a
gratified sense of proprietorship. The cheeks of him were tanned to a
healthy brown, his eyes clear and shining. The offending flesh had
fallen away on the strenuous paths of the Klappan. He radiated
boundless vitality, strength, alertness, that perfect co-ordination of
mind and body that is bred of faring resourcefully along rude ways.
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