Why, I lived in the assay-house at two or three
times, and then studied it afterward."

"Hey, up there!" a shout came from the roadway below.

They turned and went out to the little cindered, littered level in
front of the door, and looked down to where, on the roadway a hundred
feet below, a man stood at the head of a string of panting burros, and
they recognized in him a packer from Goldpan.

"I've got somethin' here for you." He waved his hand back toward the
string of burros.

"What is it?" asked Bill, turning to Dick.

"I don't know what it can be. I have ordered nothing as heavy as that
outfit appears to be."

Perplexed, they excused themselves and descended the slope, leaving
Joan standing there in front of the assay office, and enjoying the
picture of the canyon, with its border of working buildings on one
side, and its scattered cabins, mess- and bunk-houses on the other,
the huge waste dump towering away from the hoist, and filling the head
of the canyon, and the sparkle of the stream below.

"It's for you, all right," the packer insisted. "The Wells Fargo agent
turned it over to me down in Goldpan, and said the money had been sent
to pay me for bringin' it up here. I don't know what it is. It's
stones of some kind."

Still more perplexed, the partners ordered him to take his pack train
around to the storage house, and Bill led the way while his partner
climbed back up the hill, and rejoined Joan. He was showing her some
of the assay slips from the green lead when they heard a loud call
from the yard. It was Bill, beckoning. They went across to meet him.
One of the hitches had been thrown, and the other burros stood
expectantly waiting to be relieved of their burdens.

"It's a tombstone," Bill said gravely. "It's for Bell's grave. The
express receipt shows that it was sent by----" he hesitated for a
moment, as if studying whether to use one name, or another, and then
concluded--"The Lily."

He pointed to a section of granite at their feet, and on its polished
surface they read:

Under this granite sleeps Bells Park, an engineer. Murdered in
defense of his employers. Faithful when living, and faithful when
dead, to the Croix d'Or and all those principles which make a
worthy man.

A sudden, overwhelming sadness seemed to descend upon them. Bill
turned abruptly, and stepped across toward the boiler-house. The
whistle sent out a long-drawn, booming call--the alarm signal for the
mine. In a