holes in
the center, to blow out the crown; then the side holes, breaking into
the opening; and the top-holes, shooting the rock down from above; and
then, last and most powerful, the deep bottom holes that threw the dirt
back down the tunnel and left the face clear for more work.

As the poisonous smoke was drifting slowly out of the tunnel mouth
Denver fired up his forge and re-sharpened his drills; and then, along
towards evening, when the fumes had become diffused, he went in to see
what he had uncovered. Sometimes the vein widened or developed rich
lenses, and sometimes it pinched down until the walls enclosed nothing
but a narrow streak of talc; but always it dipped down, and that was a
good sign, a prophecy of the true fissure vein to come. The ore that he
mined now was a mere excrescence of the great ore-body he hoped to find,
but each day the blanket-vein turned and dipped on itself until at last
it folded over and led down. In a huge mass of rocks, stuck together by
crystals of silica and stained by the action of acids, the silver and
copper came together and intermingled at the fissure vent which had
produced them both. Denver stared at it through the powder smoke, then
he grabbed up some samples and went to see Bunker Hill.

Not since that great day when Denver had struck the copper had Bunker
shown any interest in the mine. He sat around the house listening to
Drusilla while she practiced and opening the store for chance customers;
but towards Denver he still maintained a grim-mouthed reserve, as if
discouraging him from asking any favors. Perhaps the fact that Denver's
money was all gone had a more or less direct bearing on the case; but
though he was living on the last of his provisions Denver had refrained
from asking for credit. His last shipment of powder and blacksmith's
coal had cost twenty per cent more than he had figured and he had sent
for a few more records; and after paying the two bills there was only
some small change left in the wallet which had once bulged with
greenbacks. But his pride was involved, for he had read Drusilla a
lecture on the evils of being faint-hearted, so he had simply stopped
buying at the little store and lived on what he had left. But now--well,
with that fissure vein opened up and a solid body of ore in sight, he
might reasonably demand the customary accommodations which all merchants
accord to good customers.

"Well, I've struck it," he said when he had Bunker in t