hed."

"Perhaps he is keeping free from bonds that he may marry this ward of his
for whom he appears so troubled," remarked Mr. Haydon.

Lyster looked anything but pleased at the suggestion.

"I don't think he would like to hear that said," he returned. "'Tana is
only a little girl in his eyes--one left in his charge at the death of her
own people, and one who appeals to him very strongly just now because of
her helplessness."

"Well," said Mr. Haydon, with a slight smile, "I appear to be rather
unfortunate in all my surmises over the people of this new country,
especially this new camp. I do not know whether it is because I am in a
stupid mood, or because I have come among people too peculiar to be judged
by ordinary standards. But the thing I am interested in above and beyond
our host and his _protegee_ is the gold mine he wrote you to find a buyer
for. I think I could appreciate that, at least, at its full value, if I
was allowed a sight of the output."

The doctor had hurried to the cabin even before Overton and Miss Slocum,
so the two gentlemen were left by themselves, to follow at their leisure.
Mr. Haydon seemed a trifle resentful at this indifferent reception.

"One would think this man had been making big deals in gold ore all his
life, and was perfectly indifferent as to whether our capital is to be
used to develop this find of his," he remarked, as they approached the
cabin. "Did you not tell me he was a poor man?"

"Oh, yes. Poor in gold or silver of the United States mint," agreed
Lyster, with a strong endeavor to keep down his impatience of this magnate
of the speculative world, this wizard of the world of stocks and bonds,
whom his partners deferred to, whose nod and beck meant much in a circle
of capitalists. "I myself, when back East," thought Lyster to himself,
"considered Haydon a wonderful man, but he seems suddenly to have grown
dwarfed and petty in my eyes, and I wonder that I ever paid such reverence
to his judgment."

He smiled dubiously to himself at the consciousness that the wide spirit
of the West must have already changed his own views of things somewhat,
since once he had thought this marketer of mines superior.

"But no one out here would think of calling Dan Overton poor," he
continued, "simply because he is not among the class that weighs a man's
worth by the dollars he owns. He is considered one of the solid men of the
district--one of the best men to know. But no one thinks of