bandoned
shaft back of the office could he crawl down out of sight to pray. But
Job never forgot to pray in those days. He was learning, as never
before, what it is to be in the world and yet not of it; in its
turmoil and din, sharing its work, mingling with its strange
humanity, and yet living in the atmosphere of prayer and high
thinking; in a world of impurity, yet living a pure life; a world of
evil words, and yet never even thinking them; in the world, and yet
not of it.

Job Malden was fast growing into manhood. It was in those long winter
days at the Yellow Jacket that the heart came back to him and somehow
he found himself thinking of Jane Reed. The bitter memory of the folly
of those days last winter at the Frost Creek school still haunted him,
and yet the hardness had gone out of his soul. He had no right to
think of Jane, he felt; he had forfeited all claim to her affection.
But somehow the old love came back, and he longed to go to her and be
forgiven. What a true girl she was!--a child of the mountains. Little
she knew of the city and its guile, of society and its masks. How
could he ever have thought her common or beneath him! She towered up
in his thought like the pines of her native mountains, as fresh and
natural and wild as they. He would not have her different. She was far
above him. Faith, and church, and simple homely virtues, and all that
is holy, were linked in Job's mind with the memory of artless, honest,
great-hearted Jane that came back to him in the lonely hours at the
mine.

One day he started back at seeing a strangely familiar face present
itself at the pay window.

"Oh, yer needn't be scart,' Job, because yer old pard's got a job in
the Yellow Jacket as well as yer." It was Dan's voice. "Must be mighty
nice in there handin' out the boodle to us poor, hard-worked laborers;
mighty easy to tuck a little of it in yer pocket now and then."

Job colored, and replied that it was not his money, and he only took
his pay like the men.

"Mighty good yet, ain't yer, Job; playin' the pious dodge still.
Thought perhaps the way that schoolma'am jilted yer would take the
big-head out of yer. Well, I don't make any pretense of bein' pious;
don't need to, as I can see--get all I want without it. Every gal in
town wants me, and a fine one that came near gettin' fooled on yer
likes me purty well. In fact, that's what's brought me over to the
mine--got to get a little stuff to fix up the house for her.