ut in Talbot, dryly.

"Well," returned Stephen after a minute, in a sulky tone, "we are all
like that,--a man falls in love with a girl, because she _is_ a girl,
and then immediately wants to turn her into a married woman."

Talbot laughed. "Good!" he said. "You are quite right."

"It's the altering process we like, and we want to do the alteration
ourselves. I showed her my pocket Greek testament yesterday," he
continued.

"And was she interested?" inquired Talbot, dryly.

"Not so much as she was in the shooting gallery," admitted Stephen. "I
told her how a bible at a man's heart had often saved his life, and she
said a pistol had done that too, and she'd rather trust the pistol."

Talbot laughed. "You say you like altering. I should think in Katrine
you've a splendid field. If you want to get her down to the
schoolmistress pattern, you've employment for a lifetime!"

Stephen flushed, as he always did at any allusion to the girl he had
loved as the type of all virtues, and yet had tired of. Good people are
always more or less interested in and attracted by the wicked, while the
wicked are not generally the least interested in nor attracted by the
good. Stephen was drawn towards this reckless daughter of the saloons
partly through the sense of her general badness, it formed unconsciously
a sort of charm for him, whereas his goodness did not act at all in the
same way upon her. To her eyes it was his one great drawback, an
overwhelming disadvantage.

He finished his supper in silence, and the two men drew in close to the
fire to smoke. That is to say, Stephen did the smoking, as he did the
talking. He consumed Talbot's tobacco, and filled Talbot's cabin with
its fumes. Talbot himself did not smoke.

Stephen's return to his own claim freed Talbot from the double share of
work he had been doing for the last week, and he remained on his own
claims all day, tramping from one end to the other, directing where a
new shaft should be made, overseeing closely all the work that went on,
and doing a good deal of it himself; and in those days he became more
clearly conscious than ever of the difference that was growing up in his
men's manner towards him. There was a veiled insolence in their replies
to his questions, a certain want of promptness in obeying his orders,
which caused a curious gleam to come into the quiet grey eyes as,
apparently without noticing it, he passed on.

He did not speak of it, not even to his for