to see her effort to make
light of it all to her companion, who was quite evidently her father.
She smiled at him even while she pressed one slim hand against her
bosom.

Clement longed to take her in his arms and carry her up the
stairway--it seemed the thing most worth doing in all the world--but
he could only lean against the desk and see them go slowly stair by
stair out of sight.

"Who are they?" he asked of the clerk whom he detected also watching
them with almost the same breathless interest.

"Chicago merchant, G. B. Ross. That's his daughter. She's pretty far
gone--consumption, I reckon. It looks tough to see a girl like that go
off. You'd think now----"

Clement did not remain to hear the clerk moralize further; he went
immediately to his own hotel, paid his bill, and ordered his baggage
sent to the other house. He wondered at himself for this overpowering
interest in a sick girl, and at his plan to see her again.

He reasoned that he would be able to see her at breakfast time,
provided she came down to breakfast, and provided he hit upon the same
hour of eating. He began to calculate upon the probable hour when she
would come down. It was astounding how completely she occupied his
thought already.

He struck off up the canon where no sound was, other than the roar of
the wild little stream which seemed to lift its voice in wilder clamor
as the night fell. Its presence helped him to think out his situation.
He had grown self-analytical during his life in the camp, where he
was alone so far as his finer feelings were concerned, and he had come
to believe in many strange things which he said nothing about to any
friend he had.

He had come to believe in fate and also in intuition. A powerful
impulse to do he counted higher than reason. That is to say, if he had
a powerful impulse to run a shaft in a certain direction he would so
act, no matter if his reason declared dead against it. The hidden and
uncontrollable processes of his mind had given him the secret of "The
Witch's" gold, had led him right in his shafting and in his selection
of friends and assistants--and had made him a millionaire at
thirty-seven years of age. He was prone to over-value the intuitional
side of his nature, probably--an error common among practical men.

Fate was, with him, luck raised to a higher power. What was to be
would be; the unexpected happened; the expected, hoped for, labored
for, did not always happen. All around h