n, what is that to you! Your
work is to reclaim and in the face of a thousand defeats and desolations
still to reclaim, with the eternal faith that for you the wastes shall
blossom like the rose. Work, no matter how brokenly, how futilely. To
build houses of sand is better than to sit in profitless dreams and live
in an animal content."

When later he drove Pearl up the mountainside, almost in silence, as
they had come, after his few words of admiration and appreciation of her
dancing, there was a shadow for the first time in Harry's clear eyes, a
shadow which did not pass.

CHAPTER XI

Had Gallito but known it, his theory of the unexpected was never more
perfectly demonstrated than it was upon the night Pearl danced and in
the days which followed. Hanson had left early the next morning with the
firm determination of returning almost immediately accompanied by one or
more detectives and of securing that much coveted prize, Jose. Also, he
gloated over the prospect of seeing Gallito, Bob Flick and Seagreave
arrested for conniving at Jose's escape and for harboring him during all
these months.

But the unexpected did occur. As Seagreave had predicted, the snow began
to fall, and began the very night that Pearl danced in the town hall;
and fell so steadily and uninterruptedly that the progress of the train
which bore Hanson down the mountains was considerably impeded. Thus, the
very forces of the air conspired for Jose, and ably were they seconded
by other invisible and unknown agencies. Even before Hanson had reached
the coast he found himself powerless "in the fell clutch of
circumstance." He had taken cold in the mountains and for several weeks
was too seriously ill even to contemplate with much interest his plan of
revenge. And by the time that he had recovered sufficiently to give
consideration to the matter again, a very little investigation
convinced him of the necessity for patience. So thoroughly had the
season and the elements conspired, that Colina was effectually cut off
from the outer world, a camp beleaguered by snow, and Jose, for several
months at least, would be the prisoner of the mountains and not of man.

But Colina was used to this experience. It was one which she had
regularly undergone every winter of her existence. Therefore, her
inhabitants prepared for it and bore it with what equanimity they could
summon. It was but a small camp so far up in the mountains that the
mines were practica