oung stock-broker, and
be ill-treated and long for the old miners who would get word of it
and buy some fine clothes from Joe--Buy or Sell, and go East to the
consternation of the rich relatives and see that their little mountain
flower was treated right.

As he identified this photo-play he studied the interior of the cabin,
the rough table at which the three now ate, the makeshift chairs, the
rifle over the fireplace, the picks and shovels, the shelf along the
wall with its crude dishes, the calico curtain screening off what would
be the dressing room of the little mountain flower. It was a home-like
room, for all its roughness. Along one wall were two bunks, one above
the other, well supplied with blankets.

The director, after a final shot of one of the miners being scalded by
his coffee which he drank from a saucer, had said, "All right, boys!
We'll have the fight first thing in the morning."

Merton Gill passed on. He didn't quite know what the fight would be
about. Surely the two miners wouldn't fight. Perhaps another miner of
loose character would come along and try to jump their claim, or attempt
some dirty work with the little girl. Something like that. He carried
with him the picture of the homey little ulterior, the fireplace
with its cooking utensils, the two bunks with their ample stock
of blankets--the crude door closed with a wooden bar and a leather
latch-string, which hung trustfully outside.

In other circumstances--chiefly those in which Merton Gill had now been
the prominent figure in the film world he meant one day to become--he
would on this night have undoubtedly won public attention for his
mysterious disappearance. The modest room in the Patterson home, to
which for three months he had unfailingly come after the first picture
show, on this night went untenanted. The guardian at the Holden gate
would have testified that he had not passed out that way, and the way
through the offices had been closed at five, subsequent to which hour
several witnesses could have sworn to seeing him still on the lot.

In the ensuing search even the tank at the lower end of the lot might
have been dragged--without result.

Being little known to the public, however, and in the Patterson home it
being supposed that you could never tell about motion-picture actors,
his disappearance for the night caused absolutely no slightest ripple.
Public attention as regarded the young man remained at a mirror-like
calm, unf