ing was coming as the seeress had predicted--good Old
Mother Trigedgo with her cards and astrology--and all that was necessary
was to follow her advice and the beautiful Drusilla would be his. He
must treat her at first like any young country girl, as if she had no
beauty or charm; and then in some way, unrevealed as yet, he would win
her love in return. He had schooled himself rigidly to resist her
fascination, but when she had looked up at him with her beseeching blue
eyes and asked him to sell back the mine, only a miracle of intercession
had saved him from yielding and accepting back the five hundred dollars.
He was like clay in her hands--her voice thrilled him, her eyes dazzled
him, her smile made him forget everything else--yet just at the moment
when he had reached out for the money the memory of the prophecy had
come back to him. And so he had refused, turning a deaf ear to her
entreaties, and scoffing at her easy-going father; and she had gone off
down the trail without once looking back, promising Bunker she would
become a great singer.

Denver smiled again dreamily as he dwelt upon her beauty, her hair like
fine-spun gold, her eyes that mirrored every thought; and with it all, a
something he could not name that made his heart leap and choke him. He
could not speak when she first addressed him, his brain had gone into a
whirl; and so he had sat there, like a great oaf of a miner, and refused
to give her anything. It was rough, yet the Cornish seeress had required
it; and doubtless, being a woman herself, she understood the feminine
heart. At the end of his long reverie Denver sighed again, for the ways
of astrologers were beyond him.

In the morning he rose early, to muck out the rock and clear the tunnel
for a new round of holes; and each time as he came out with a
wheel-barrow full of waste he cocked his eye to the west. Bible-Back
Murray would be coming over soon, if he was still at his camp around the
hill. Yet the second day passed before he arrived, thundering in from
the valley in his big, yellow car; and even then he made some purchases
at the store before he came up to the mine.

"Good morning!" he hailed cheerily, "they tell me you've struck ore.
Well, well; how does the vein show up?"

"'Bout the same," mumbled Denver and glanced at him curiously. He had
expected a little fireworks.

"About the same, eh?" repeated Murray, flicking his rebellious glass
eye, which had a tendency to stare off to