w, but would not admit, even to himself, that the march of
progress must inevitably drive out of existence the still hidden in his
cave and make the marketing of its illicit product doubly hazardous,
nay, quite impossible. He knew that he must give it up; he realized that
real good sense would send him home, that day, to bury the last trace of
it in some spot where it never could be found again. But his stubborn
soul revolted at the thought of being beaten, finally, by this
civilization which he hated; he would not admit, even in his mind, that
it had bested him, or could ever best him. He ground his teeth and
pressed his elbow down against the stock of his long rifle with a force
which ground the gun into his side until it hurt him. He would never
give up, never! Let them try to get him if they could, these lowlanders!
He would not be afraid of them. His father had not been--and he would
never be.

And there was a voice within him which kept whispering as did the one
which counselled the abandonment of his illegal calling, the abandonment
of that other effort, infinitely dearer to him, to win Madge Brierly's
love and hand in marriage. His common-sense assured him that she was not
made for such as he, that, while she had been born there in the
mountains there were delicacies, refinements in her which would make her
mating with his rude and uncouth strength impossible, would make it
cruelly unhappy for her, even should it come about. But this voice he
steadfastly declined to listen to, even more emphatically than he did to
that which counselled caution in his calling. Again he ground his
teeth. His heels, when they came down upon the rocky mountain trails up
which he soon was climbing, fell on the slopes so heavily that,
constantly, his progress was followed by the rattle of small stones down
the inclined path behind him, constant little landslides. And, at
ordinary times, Joe Lorey, awkward as he looked to be, could scale a
sloping sand-bank without sending down a sliding spoonful to betray the
fact that he was moving on it to the wild things it might startle.

Heavily he resolved within his soul, against his own best judgment, to
keep up both fights and win.

The dynamite which he had stolen and which nestled in his game-sack
comforted him, although he did not know how he would use it. Many times,
as he worked through the narrow trails, jumped from stepping-stone to
stepping-stone in crossing mountain-streams, pulled