his written promise to show
me the ledge he'd found and to sell whatever right he had to the claim
himself to me for twenty-five thousand dollars.... I found it, I have an
incontestable title to it, and I refused a million dollars flat for it
less than three days ago!"

In her place the girl half raised, met the speaker eye to eye.

"And still, knowing in advance it was worth a fortune, Evans sold to
you."

"Yes, voluntarily; begged it of me. I said no one would believe me now,
even you--I don't care for the opinion of any one else."

"I don't doubt you, not for a second." The brown eyes had dropped now.
"But I can't quite understand."

"No, I repeat once more, no one can understand who wasn't there. He was
crazy, avariciously crazy. He wanted the money then, then; wanted to see
it, to feel it, that minute. It was his and he wanted it; not the five
thousand he'd promised, but five times that. He wouldn't wait. He would
have it.

"I tried to reason with him, to argue with him, offered him his own terms
if he'd let me develop it; but he wouldn't listen. If I wouldn't accept
he'd throw me over entirely, notwithstanding the fact that I'd made the
find possible, and sell to some one else--sell something he didn't have;
for at last it all came out, why he'd gone crazy and wouldn't wait. He'd
lied to me previously. Before he'd left Tonopah he'd talked, told of his
find to a half-dozen of his friends, and left them specimens of the same
ore he'd brought me. He'd told them everything, in fact, except the
location. It developed that he had retained judgment enough to keep back
even a hint of that; and they were waiting for him there,--he knew it and
I knew it,--waiting his return, waiting to learn the location, and to
steal his claim before he could stake it himself."

"And still, feeling certain of that in your own mind, you paid him his
price!"

"Every dollar of it--before I took the midnight train West. I raised it
after business hours, in a dozen different ways; but I got it. I pooled
for security everything I had in the world--except Old Reliable; I kept
that free for a purpose,--my house, my library, my stock in the traction
company, some real estate I own. I had to give good measure because I had
to have the money right then. And I got it. It was a pull but I got it."

The girl's head was back on her folded arms once more, the long lashes
all but covering her eyes.

"Supposing Evans had been lying to you after