showed that the map had not been checked up,
and that the shaft was seven hundred and ten feet deep, and that they
would commence a drift on the seven-hundred-foot mark the next day.

Dick was awakened at an early hour, and found Bill missing. He
went over to the hoist house, where a sleepy night man, new to the
hours, grinned at him with a pleasant: "Looks like we're busy,
just--the--same, Mr. Townsend! The old man"--the superintendent of a
mine is always "the old man," be he but twenty--"left orders last
night that when the water was clear at seven hundred feet he was to be
called. He kicked up two of the drill men at four this mornin',
and they're down there puttin' the steel into the rock ever since.
Hear 'em? He's makin' things hump!"

Dick leaned over the unused compartment of the shaft, and heard the
steady, savage chugging of the drills. Bill was "makin' things hump!"
with a vengeance.

A man who had been sent to the camp for the semi-weekly mail arrived
while the partners were at breakfast, and the first letter laid before
them was one with a New York postmark, which Dick read anxiously. It
was from Sloan, who told him that he had been unexpectedly called to
the Pacific coast on a hurried trip, and that, while he did not have
time to visit the Croix d'Or, he very earnestly hoped that Dick would
arrange, on receipt of the letter, to meet him in Seattle, and named a
date.

"Whe-e-w! You got to move some, ain't you? Let's see, if you want to
meet him you'll have to be hittin' the trail out of here in an hour,"
said Bill, laying down his knife and fork. "What do you s'pose is up?
Goin' to tie the poke strings again?"

Dick feared something was amiss. And he continued to think of this
after he had written a hasty note to Joan, telling her of his abrupt
absence, and that he expected to return in a week. He pondered for a
moment whether or not to add some note of affection, but decided that
he was still under her ban, and so contented himself with the closing
line:

"I am following your advice. We are sinking!"

He had to run, bag in hand, to catch the stage from Goldpan, and as it
jolted along over the rough passes and rugged inclines had a medley of
thought. Sometimes he could not imagine why Sloan had been so anxious
to talk with him, and in the other and happier intervals, he thought
of Joan Presby, daughter of the man whom he had come to regard as
antagonistic in many ways.

The confusion of mind dwelt