een thinking nothing of the kind, but for some obscure
reason the skeptical jeer that had risen to his lips remained unsaid.
He rose impatiently. "Well, there seems to be no chance of discovering
anything now; the house is burnt, the gang dispersed, and she has
probably gone with them." He paused, and then laid three or four large
gold pieces on the table. "It's for that old bill of our party,
Collinson," he said. "I'll settle and collect from each. Some time
when you come over to the mine, and I hope you'll give us a call, you
can bring the horse. Meanwhile you can use him; you'll find he's a
little quicker than the mule. How is business?" he added, with a
perfunctory glance around the vacant room and dusty bar.

"Thar ain't much passin' this way," said Collinson with equal
carelessness, as he gathered up the money, "'cept those boys from the
valley, and they're most always strapped when they come here."

Key smiled as he observed that Collinson offered him no receipt, and,
moreover, as he remembered that he had only Collinson's word for the
destruction of Parker's draft. But he merely glanced at his
unconscious host, and said nothing. After a pause he returned in a
lighter tone: "I suppose you are rather out of the world here. Indeed,
I had an idea at first of buying out your mill, Collinson, and putting
in steam power to get out timber for our new buildings, but you see you
are so far away from the wagon-road, that we couldn't haul the timber
away. That was the trouble, or I'd have made you a fair offer."

"I don't reckon to ever sell the mill," said Collinson simply. Then
observing the look of suspicion in his companion's face, he added
gravely, "You see, I rigged up the whole thing when I expected my wife
out from the States, and I calkilate to keep it in memory of her."

Key slightly lifted his brows. "But you never told us, by the way, HOW
you ever came to put up a mill here with such an uncertain
water-supply."

"It wasn't onsartin when I came here, Mr. Key; it was a full-fed stream
straight from them snow peaks. It was the earthquake did it."

"The earthquake!" repeated Key.

"Yes. Ef the earthquake kin heave up that silver-bearing rock that you
told us about the first day you kem here, and that you found t'other
day, it could play roots with a mere mill-stream, I reckon."

"But the convulsion I spoke of happened ages on ages ago, when this
whole mountain range was being fashioned," said Ke