l through and
live to "sharp" another day. The doctors, at any rate, worked like
tigers to insure this end. For there was no doubt that, if he died,
the consequences must be extremely unpleasant for Druro. It was highly
improbable that the latter would pay the penalty with his life, but a
verdict of manslaughter against him could scarcely be avoided. He had
struck Capperne down after a violent dispute in which the Australian,
accused of sharping, had given him the lie, and Capperne's friends, the
only witnesses of the fracas, were prepared, if Capperne died, to swear
away Druro's life and liberty. As it was, they moved heaven and earth
to have him put under arrest--"in case of accidents"--but their efforts
were crowned with neither appreciation nor success, and Druro went
about much as usual, careless, amusing, and apparently not unduly
depressed. Still, it was a dark and doubtful period, and that his
future hung precariously in the balance, he was very well aware, and so
were his friends.

The only thing noticeably unusual in his habits was a certain avoidance
of the Falcon Hotel and the society of womankind; and this, of course,
was very well understood. It was natural that a man under a
storm-cloud that might burst any moment and blot him out should wish to
keep out of the range of women's emotional sympathy. Men's sympathy is
of a different calibre. Even when it is a practical, living thing that
can be felt and built on, it is often almost cold-bloodedly
inarticulate and undemonstrative, which is the only kind of sympathy
acceptable to a man in trouble, especially a man of Druro's type, who
did not want to discuss the thing at all, but just to take what was
coming to him with a stiff lip.

One good result of it all was that now, at last, his mine was getting a
little attention. Once more he donned blue overalls and a black face
and embroidered his pants with cyanide burns. And Emma Guthrie was
content, or as content as Emma Guthrie could be. Rumour now said that
crushing would be commenced on the mine in two months' time, and that
ten stamps were to be added to the milling-plant already existing.
This looked good for Druro's financial prospects, however gloomy his
social ones might be. But he never talked. Emma Guthrie was the man
who did all the bucking about the mine and its future. Rumour did the
rest handsomely, and it was unanimously accorded that fate would be
playing a shady trick indeed on L