ny difference
in him, and she knew she would be able to read it in his eyes.

As she went through the main street of the camp she saw Stark occupied
near the water-front, where he had bought a building lot. He spoke to
her as she was about to pass.

"Good-morning, Miss. Are you rested from your trip?"

She answered that she was, and would have continued on her way, but he
stopped her.

"I don't want you to think that mining matter was my doing," he said.
"I've got nothing against you. Your old man hasn't wasted any affection
on me, and I can get along without him, all right, but I don't make
trouble for girls if I can help it."

The girl believed that he meant what he said; his words rang true, and
he spoke seriously. Moreover, Stark was known already in the camp as a
man who did not go out of his way to make friends or to render an
accounting of his deeds, so it was natural that when he made her a show
of kindness Necia should treat him with less coldness than might have
been expected. The man had exercised an occult influence upon her from
the time she first saw him at Lee's cabin, but it was too vague for
definite feeling, and she had been too strongly swayed by Poleon and
her father in their attitude towards him to be conscious of it. Finding
him now, however, in a gentle humor, she was drawn to him unwittingly,
and felt an overweening desire to talk with him, even at the hazard of
offending her own people. The encounter fitted in with her rebellious
mood, for there were things she wished to know, things she must find
out from some one who knew the world and would not be afraid to answer
her questions candidly.

"I'm going to build a big dance-hall and saloon here," said Stark,
showing her the stakes that he had driven. "As soon as the rush to the
creek is over I'll hire a gang of men to get out a lot of house logs.
I'll finish it in a week and be open for the stampede."

"Do you think this will be a big town?" she asked.

"Nobody can tell, but I'll take a chance. If it proves to be a false
alarm I'll move on--I've done it before."

"You've been in a great many camps, I suppose."

He said that he had, that for twenty years he had been on the frontier,
and knew it from West Texas to the Circle.

"And are they all alike?"

"Very much. The land lies different but the people are the same."

"I've never known anything except this." She swept the points of the
compass with her arm. "And there is so much be