Not unless Harry, my partner, has put in a shot since I 've been gone.
As soon as we saw that we were into ore, I hurried away to come down
here to get an assay."

"Well, Son, now you can hurry back and begin cutting into a fortune.
If that vein's only four inches wide, you 've got plenty to keep you
for the rest of your life."

"It must be more than that--the drill must have been into it several
inches before I ever noticed it. I 'd been scraping the muck out of
there without paying much attention. It looked so hopeless."

Undertaker Chastine turned to his work.

"Then hurry along, Son. I suppose," he asked, as he looked over his
glasses for the last time, "that you don't want me to say anything
about it?"

"Not until--"

"You 're sure. I know. Well, good news is awful hard to keep--but I
'll do my best. Run along."

And Fairchild "ran." Whistling and happy, he turned out of the office
of the Sampler and into the street, his coat open, his big cap high on
his head, regardless of the sweep of the cold wind and the fine snow
that it carried on its icy breath. Through town he went, bumping into
pedestrians now and then, and apologizing in a vacant, absent manner.
The waiting of months was over, and Fairchild at last was beginning to
see his dreams come true. Like a boy, he turned up Kentucky Gulch,
bucking the big drifts and kicking the snow before him in flying,
splattering spray, stopping his whistling now and then to
sing,--foolish songs without words or rhyme or rhythm, the songs of a
heart too much engrossed with the joy of living to take cognizance of
mere rules of melody!

So this was the reason that Rodaine had acknowledged the value of the
mine that day in court! This was the reason for the mysterious offer
of fifty thousand dollars and for the later one of nearly a quarter of
a million! Rodaine had known; Rodaine had information, and Rodaine had
been willing to pay to gain possession of what now appeared to be a
bonanza. But Rodaine had failed. And Fairchild had won!

Won! But suddenly he realized that there was a blankness about it all.
He had won money, it is true. But all the money in the world could not
free him from the taint that had been left upon him by a coroner's
investigation, from the hint that still remained in the recommendation
of the grand jury that the murder of Sissie Larsen be looked into
further. Nor could it remove the stigma of the four charges against
Harry, whi