d a look of pain and horror. Her
man--him that she was to marry--was the head of a mine also at Selby,
forty miles beyond Bindon, and the horrible plot came home to her with
piercing significance.

"Without a second's warning," he urged, "to go like that, the man that
was so good to my little gal, an' me with a chance to save him, an'
others too, p'r'aps. You won't let it be. Say, I'm pinnin' my faith to
you. I'm--"

Suddenly he swayed. She caught him, held him, and lowered him gently in
a chair. Presently he opened his eyes. "It's want o' food, I suppose,"
he said. "If you've got a bit of bread and meat--I must keep up."

She went to a cupboard, but suddenly turned towards him again. Her ears
had caught a sound outside in the underbush. He had heard also, and he
half staggered to his feet.

"Quick-in here!" she said, and, opening a door, pushed him inside.
"Lie down on my bed, and I'll bring you vittles as quick as I can," she
added. Then she shut the door, turned to the ironing-board, and took up
the iron, as the figure of a man darkened the doorway.

"Hello, Jinny, fixin' up for to-morrow?" the man said, stepping inside,
with a rifle under his arm and some pigeons in his hand.

She nodded and gave him an impatient, scrutinising glance. His face had
a fatuous kind of smile.

"Been celebrating the pigeons?" she asked drily, jerking her head
towards the two birds, which she had seen drop from her Eden skies a
short time before.

"I only had one swig of whiskey, honest Injun!" he answered. "I s'pose I
might have waited till to-morrow, but I was dead-beat. I got a bear over
by the Tenmile Reach, and I was tired. I ain't so young as I used to be,
and, anyhow, what's the good! What's ahead of me? You're going to git
married to-morrow after all these years we bin together, and you're
going down to Selby from the mountains, where I won't see you, not once
in a blue moon. Only that old trollop, Mother Massy, to look after me."

"Come down to Selby and live there. You'll be welcome by Jake and me."

He stood his gun in the corner and, swinging the pigeons in his hand,
said: "Me live out of the mountains? Don't you know better than that?
I couldn't breathe; and I wouldn't want to breathe. I've got my shack
here, I got my fur business, and they're still fond of whiskey up
North!" He chuckled to himself, as he thought of the illicit still
farther up the mountain behind them. "I make enough to live on, and I've
put a fe