iend had learned what she wanted to know, and the knowledge of it
troubled her. She would have given a good deal to have been able to
lift this sorrow from the girl riding beside her. For she was aware
that Aline Harley might as well have reached for the moon as that
toward which her untutored heart yearned. She had come to life late and
traveled in it but a little way. Yet the tragedy of it was about to
engulf her. No lifeboat was in sight. She must sink or swim alone.
Virginia's unspoiled heart went out to her with a rush of pity and
sympathy. Almost the very words that Waring Ridgway had used came to
her lips.

"You poor lamb! You poor, forsaken lamb!"

But she spoke instead with laughter and lightness, seeing nothing of
the girl's distress, at least, until after they separated at the door
of the hotel.

CHAPTER 13. FIRST BLOOD

After Ridgway's cavalier refusal to negotiate a peace treaty, Simon
Harley and his body-guard walked back to the offices of the
Consolidated, where they arrived at the same time as the news of the
enemy's first blow since the declaration of renewed war.

Hobart was at his desk with his ear to the telephone receiver when the
great financier came into the inner office of the manager.

"Yes. When? Driven out, you say? Yes--yes. Anybody hurt? Followed our
men through into our tunnel? No, don't do anything till you hear from
me. Send Rhys up at once. Let me know any further developments that
occur."

Hobart hung up the receiver and turned on his swivel-chair toward his
chief. "Another outrage, sir, at the hands of Ridgway. It is in regard
to those veins in the Copper King that he claims. Dalton, his
superintendent of the Taurus, drove a tunnel across our lateral lines
and began working them, though their own judge has not yet rendered a
decision in their favor. Of course, I put a large force in them at
once. To-day we tapped their workings at the twelfth level. Our
foreman, Miles, has just telephoned me that Dalton turned the air
pressure on our men, blew out their candles, and flung a mixture of
lime and rocks at them. Several of the men are hurt, though none badly.
It seems that Dalton has thrown a force into our tunnels and is holding
the entrances against us at the point where the eleventh, twelfth, and
thirteenth levels touch the cage. It means that he will work those
veins, and probably others that are acknowledged to be ours, unless we
drive them out, which would probably be a