confidence in you. I presume that you will therefore be
amenable to doing all you can to save from the wreckage of the dead
property all that is possible in behalf of that partner as well as
yourself, and am authorized to make you the extremely liberal offer of
sixty thousand dollars for the full title to the property."

The price was ridiculously low, and Dick knew it; yet if the mine
produced nothing more, and was, as the experts were supposed to have
reported, worthless, the amount was extremely liberal. But for Bill he
would have hesitated to decline such an offer. That worthy, however,
threw his head back and roared derisively.

"Sixty thousand? Sixty thousand! What does that idiot think men who
have dropped a quarter of a million in a property would quit for? Does
he think that sixty thousand is any saving from a wreck like this has
been? Tell him to chase himself--that the tail goes with the hide, and
you'll quit clean whipped, or not at all."

But Dick was loath to refuse any offer without consulting his superior
in New York, and accordingly wandered off into the hills to think. It
was late in the afternoon, and he mechanically tramped over the trail
to the pipe line, where, when hope ran higher, he had dared to dream.

The whole situation had become a nerve-racking tragedy of mind and
action. His desperate desire for success after his self-acknowledgment
that he loved Miss Presby, and then the blows that had been rained on
him and the mine, the failure of the green lead to hold out when it
had at least promised and justified operation--all cumulated into a
disheartening climax which was testing his fortitude as it had never
been tried before. He was not of those who lack either persistence,
determination, or moral bravery; and it was this last characteristic,
coupled with a certain maturing caution, which made him question the
honesty of proceeding to lay out, perhaps, the entire hundred thousand
volunteered by Sloan, with such little certainty of returns. Had the
money been his own, he would have taken the chances uncomplainingly;
but his judgment told him that, had he been sent to the Croix d'Or as
an expert to pass an opinion on the justification of putting a hundred
thousand into the ground, under present conditions, he would have
advised against it.

He went as far as the reservoir. Its wreckage seemed to mock his
efforts. To rebuild it alone meant big expense in a country where
every barrel of cemen