ious bonanza about which everybody in town was gossiping. It
was only the fact that the hills were fairly dotted with embryotic
mines like our own--this and the other fact that our dump showed no
signs of ore--that saved us.

Two of these prying visitors hung around for an hour or more, and one
of the pair wanted to go down in the shaft, which was now deep enough
to be quite safe from prying eyes at the surface. I was acting as
windlass-man at the time, and I bluffed him, telling him that with two
men working in the hole there wasn't room for a third--which was true
enough. But beyond this fact there were by this time the best of
reasons for keeping strangers out of our shaft. To name the biggest of
them, our marvelous Golconda vein had widened steadily with the
increasing depth until now we were sinking in solid ore.

It was Gifford's turn to guard the ore load that night, and after the
team got away I persuaded Barrett to go to bed. He was showing the
effects of the terrible toil worse than either the carpenter or myself,
and I was afraid he might break when the fighting strain came. I had
yet to learn what magnificent reserves there were in this clean-cut,
high-strung young fellow who, when we began, looked as if he had never
done a day's real labor in his life.

Since we had never yet left the shaft unguarded for a single hour of
the day or night, I took my place at the pit mouth as soon as Barrett's
candle went out. It was a fine night, warm for the altitude and
brightly starlit, though there was no moon. In the stillness the
subdued clamor of the Lawrenceburg's hoists floated up over the spur
shoulder; and by listening intently I fancied I could hear the distant
rumble of our ore wagon making its way down the mountain.

In the isolation and loneliness of the night watch it was inevitable
that my thoughts should hark back to the near-meeting with Kellow, and
to the moral lapse which it had provoked. Doubtless every man
rediscovers himself many times in the course of a lifetime. In prison
I had been sustained by a vindictive determination to win out and
square accounts with Abel Geddis and Abner Withers. After my release
another motive had displaced the vengeful prompting: the losing fight
for reinstatement in the good opinion of the world seemed to be the
only thing worth living for.

But now I was finding that there was a well-spring of action deeper
than either of these, and the name of it was a d