ght at
the mill below. I'm a millwright. I have some property to inspect in
Silver Plume, hence I'm walking across. I didn't know it was so far; I
was misinformed. I'm not accustomed to this high air and I'm used up.
Can you take care of me?"

The miner glanced round at the heap of ore which betrayed his craft, and
then back at the dark, bearded, impassive face.

"Come in," he said at last, "I'll feed you." But his manner was at once
surly and suspicious.

The walls of the hovel were built partly of logs and partly of boulders,
and its roof was compacted of dirt and gravel; but it was decently
habitable. The furniture (hand-rived out of slabs) was scanty, and the
floor was laid with planks, yet everything indicated many days of wear.

"You've been here some time," the stranger remarked rather than asked.

"Ten years."

Thereafter the two men engaged in a silent duel. The millwright, leaning
back in his rude chair, stretched his tired limbs and gazed down the
valley with no further word of inquiry, while his grudging host prepared
a primitive meal and set it upon a box which served as a table.

"You may eat," he curtly said.

In complete silence and with calm abstraction the stranger turned to the
food and ate and drank, accepting it all as if this were a roadhouse and
he a paying guest. The sullen watchfulness of his host seemed not to
disturb him, not even to interest him.

At length the miner spoke as if in answer to a question--the question he
feared.

"No, my mine has not panned out well--not yet. The ore is low-grade and
the mill is too far away."

To this informing statement the other man did not so much as lift an
eyebrow. His face was like a closed door, his eyes were curtained
windows. He mused darkly as one who broods on some bitter defeat.

Nevertheless, he was a human presence and the lonely dweller on the
heights could not resist the charm of his guest's personality, remote as
he seemed.

"Where do you live?" he asked.

There was a moment's hesitation.

"In St. Paul."

"Ever been here before?"

The dark man shook his shaggy head slowly, and dropped his eyes as if
this were the end of the communication. "No, and I never expect to come
again."

The miner perceived power in his guest's resolute taciturnity, and the
very weight of the silence eventually opened his own lips. From moment
to moment the impulse to talk grew stronger within him. There was
something as compelling as heat in t