is pocket before she had passed him.
Hurriedly he walked to the far side of the chamber and there,
pretending to examine a bit of ore, brought the missive from its place
of secretion, to unfold it with trembling fingers, then to stare at the
words which showed before him:

"Squint Rodaine is terribly worried about something. Has been on an
awful rampage all morning. Something critical is brewing, but I don't
know what. Suggest you keep watch on him. Please destroy this."

That was all. There was no signature. But Robert Fairchild had seen
the writing of Anita Richmond once before!

CHAPTER XXI

So she was his friend! So all these days of waiting had not been in
vain; all the cutting hopelessness of seeing her, only to have her turn
away her head and fail to recognize him, had been for their purpose
after all. And yet Fairchild remembered that she was engaged to
Maurice Rodaine, and that the time of the wedding must be fast
approaching. Perhaps there had been a quarrel, perhaps-- Then he
smiled. There was no perhaps about it! Anita Richmond was his friend;
she had been forced into the promise of marriage to Maurice Rodaine,
but she had not been forced into a relinquishment of her desire to
reward him somehow, some way, for the attention that he had shown her
and the liking that she knew existed in his heart.

Hastily Fairchild folded the paper and stuffed it into an inside
pocket. Then, seeking out one of the workmen, he appointed him foreman
of the gang, to take charge in his absence. Following which, he made
his way out of the mine and into town, there to hire men of Mother
Howard's suggestion and send them to the Blue Poppy, to take their
stations every few feet along the tunnel, to appear mere spectators,
but in reality to be guards who were constantly on the watch for
anything untoward that might occur. Fairchild was taking no chances
now. An hour more found him at the Sampler, watching the ore as it ran
through the great crusher hoppers, to come forth finely crumbled powder
and be sampled, ton by ton, for the assays by old Undertaker Chastine
and the three other men of his type, without which no sampler pays for
ore. Bittson approached, grinning.

"You guessed just about right," he announced. "That stuff 's running
right around two hundred dollars a ton. Need any money now?"

"All you can let me have!"

"Four or five hundred? We 've gotten in eight tons of that stuff
already;