of assorted
character, which boiled forth from open doors in discordant business
rivalry, but underneath it all was the steady, dull monotone of the
stamp-mill, remorselessly beating the ore as if in eternal industry.

"Hardly know the place now, eh?" Bill said, as they entered the open
doors of the High Light. "It certainly keeps gettin' more homelike.
Camp must be makin' money, eh?"

Dick did not answer. He was staring at a woman who stood at the lower
end of the bar outside, and talking to a man with a medicine case in
his hand. He surmised that she must be The Lily, and was astonished.
He had expected the customary brazen appearance of other camp women he
had known in his years of wandering; the hard-faced, combatative type
produced by greed. Instead, he saw a woman of perhaps thirty years of
age, or in that vague boundary between thirty and thirty-five.

She was dressed in a short skirt, wore a spotless shirt waist over an
exceptionally graceful pair of shoulders, and her hair, neatly coiled
in heavy bronze folds, was surmounted by a white hat of the frontier
type, dented in regulation form with four hollows.

From the hat to the high tan boots, she was neat and womanly; yet it
was not this that attracted him so much as her profile. From the
straight brow, down over the high, fine nose and the firm lips to the
firmer chin, the face was perfect.

As if sensing his inspection, she turned toward him, and met his
wondering eyes. Her appraisement was calm, repressed, and cold.
Her face gave him the impression that she had forgotten how to
smile. Townsend advanced toward her, certain that she must be the
proprietress of the High Light.

"You are Miss Meredith?" he interrogated, as he halted in front of
her.

"Mrs. Meredith," she corrected, still unbending, and looking at him a
question as to his business.

A forgotten courtesy impelled him to remove his hat as he introduced
himself, but Mathews did not follow it when he was introduced, and
reached out and caught her competent hand with a hard grip. Dick
explained his errand, feeling, all the time under that steady look,
that he was being measured.

"Oh, yes, they'll be all right by to-morrow, Lily," the doctor
interrupted. "Excuse me for being so abrupt, but I must go now.
Good-night."

"Good-night," she answered, and then: "I'll be up there at three
o'clock to-morrow afternoon. Ah, you were saying you wanted----"

She had turned to the partners again with