y a man who made it a business. Of course Murray
would gouge him, and overcharge him on everything, but the main idea was
to get Denver to start an account and take that much trade away from
Hill. Denver figured it all out and then let it pass, for there were
other things on his mind.

On the evening of his strike the house below had been silent; but early
the next morning she had begun again, only this time she was not singing
scales. It was grand opera now, in French and Italian; with brilliant
runs and trills and high, sustained crescendos that seemed almost to
demand applause; and high-pitched, agitato recitatives. She was running
through the scores of the standard operas--"La Traviata," "Il
Trovatore," "Martha"--but as the week wore along she stopped singing
again and Denver saw her down among the sycamores. She paid no attention
to him, wandering up and down the creek bed or sitting in gloomy silence
by the pools; but at last as he stood at the mouth of his tunnel
breaking ore with the great hammer he loved, she came out on the trail
and gazed across at him wistfully, though he feigned not to notice her
presence. He was young and vigorous, and the sledge hammer was his toy;
and as Drusilla, when she was practicing, gloried in the range of her
voice and her effortless bravuras and trills, so Denver, swinging his
sledge, felt like Thor of old when he broke the rocks with his blows.
Drusilla gazed at him and sighed and walked pensively past him, then
returned and came back up his trail.

"Good evening," she said and Denver greeted her with a smile for he saw
that her mood was friendly. She had resented, at first, his brusque
refusal and his rough, straight-out way of speaking; but she was lonely
now, and he knew in his heart that all was not well with her singing.

"You like to work, don't you?" she went on at last as he stood sweating
and dumb in her presence, "don't you ever get tired, or anything?"

"Not doing this," he said, "I'm a driller, you know, and I like to keep
my hand in. I compete in these rock-drilling contests."

"Oh, yes, father was telling me," she answered quickly. "That's where
you won all that money--the money to buy the mine."

"Yes, and I've won other money before," he boasted. "I won first place
last year in the single-handed contest--but that's too hard on your arm.
You change about, you know, in the double-handed work--one strikes while
the other turns--but in single jacking it's just h