o-morrow, by twelve o'clock noon; that's the plot; that's what
they've schemed. Three days ago, I heard. I got a man free from trouble
North--he was no good, but I thought he ought to have another chance, and
I got him free. He told me of what was to be done at Bindon. There'd been
a strike in the mine, an' my friend had took it in hand with
knuckle-dusters on. He isn't the kind to fell a tree with a jack-knife.
Then three of the strikers that had been turned away--they was the
ringleaders--they laid a plan that'd make the devil sick. They've put a
machine in the mine, an' timed it, an' it'll go off when my friend comes
out of the mine at noon to-morrow."

Her face was pale now, and her eyes had a look of pain and horror. Her
man--him that she was to marry--was the head of a mine also at Selby,
forty miles beyond Bindon, and the horrible plot came home to her with
piercing significance.

"Without a second's warning," he urged, "to go like that, the man that was
so good to my little gal, an' me with a chance to save him, an' others
too, p'r'aps. You won't let it be. Say, I'm pinnin' my faith to you.
I'm--"

Suddenly he swayed. She caught him, held him, and lowered him gently in a
chair. Presently he opened his eyes. "It's want o' food, I suppose," he
said. "If you've got a bit of bread and meat--I must keep up."

She went to a cupboard, but suddenly turned toward him again. Her ears had
caught a sound outside in the underbrush. He had heard also, and he half
staggered to his feet.

"Quick--in here!" she said, and, opening a door, pushed him inside. "Lie
down on my bed, and I'll bring you vittles as quick as I can," she added.
Then she shut the door, turned to the ironing-board, and took up the iron,
as the figure of a man darkened the doorway.

"Hello, Jinny, fixin' up for to-morrow?" the man said, stepping inside,
with a rifle under his arm and some pigeons in his hand.

She nodded and gave him an impatient, scrutinizing glance. His face had a
fatuous kind of smile.

"Been celebrating the pigeons?" she asked, dryly, jerking her head toward
the two birds, which she had seen drop from her Eden skies a short time
before.

"I only had one swig of whiskey, honest Injun!" he answered. "I s'pose I
might have waited till to-morrow, but I was dead-beat. I got a bear over
by the Ten-mile Reach, and I was tired. I ain't so young as I used to be,
and, anyhow, what's the good? What's ahead of me? You're going to git
marri