re-tire on the Denver road. But now she did not
look at him; now she pretended that she did not see him.
Before,--well, before, her eyes had at least met his, and there had
been some light of recognition, even though her carefully masked face
had belied it. Now it was different. She had gone over to the
Rodaines, she was engaged to marry the chalky-faced, hook-nosed son and
she was vice-president of their two-million-dollar mining corporation.
Fairchild did not even strive to find a meaning for it all; women are
women, and men do well sometimes if they diagnose themselves.

The summer began to grow old, and Fairchild felt that he was aging with
it. The long days beneath the ground had taught him many things about
mining now, all to no advantage. Soon they would be worth nothing,
save as five-dollar-a-day single-jackers, working for some one else.
The bank deposits were thinning, and the vein was thinning with it.
Slowly but surely, as they fought, the strip of pay ore in the rocks
was pinching out. Soon would come the time when they could work it no
longer. And then,--but Fairchild did not like to think about that.

September came, and with it the grand jury. But here for once was a
slight ray of hope. The inquisitorial body dragged through its various
functionings, while Farrell stood ready with his appeal to the court
for a lunacy board at the first hint of an investigation into Crazy
Laura's story. Three weeks of prying into "vice conditions", gambling,
profiteering and the usual petty nonsense with which so many grand
juries have managed to fritter away time under the misapprehension of
applying some weighty sort of superhuman reasoning to ordinary things,
and then good news. The body of twelve good men and true had worn
themselves out with other matters and adjourned without even taking up
the mystery of the Blue Poppy mine. But the joy of Fairchild and Harry
was short-lived. In the long, legal phraseology of the jury's report
was the recommendation that this important subject be the first for
inquiry by the next grand inquisitorial body to be convened,--and the
threat still remained.

But before the two men were now realities which were worse even than
threats, and Harry turned from his staging late one afternoon to voice
the most important.

"We 'll start single-jacking to-morrow," he announced with a little
sigh. "In the 'anging wall."

"You mean--?"

"We can't do much more up 'ere. It ain'