His cap was pulled
down over his brow.
'Good-evening!' said the landlady, in her rather ingratiating voice.
'Good-evening. A glass of ale.'
'A glass of ale,' repeated the landlady suavely. 'Cold night--but
bright.'
'Yes,' the man assented, laconically. Then he added, when nobody expected
him to say any more: 'Seasonable weather.'
'Quite seasonable, quite,' said the landlady. 'Thank you.'
The man lifted his glass straight to his lips, and emptied it. He put it
down again on the zinc counter with a click.
'Let's have another,' he said.
The woman drew the beer, and the man went away with his glass to the
second table, near the fire. The woman, after a moment's hesitation, took
her seat again at the table with the card-players. She had noticed the
man: a big fine fellow, well dressed, a stranger.
But he spoke with that Cornish-Yankee accent she accepted as the natural
twang among the miners.
The stranger put his foot on the fender and looked into the fire. He was
handsome, well coloured, with well-drawn Cornish eyebrows, and the usual
dark, bright, mindless Cornish eyes. He seemed abstracted in thought.
Then he watched the card-party.
The woman was buxom and healthy, with dark hair and small, quick brown
eyes. She was bursting with life and vigour, the energy she threw into
the game of cards excited all the men, they shouted, and laughed, and the
woman held her breast, shrieking with laughter.
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