minute before, I was rich and brimful of vanity; I was a pauper now, and
very meek. We sat still an hour, busy with thought, busy with vain and
useless self-upbraidings, busy with "Why didn't I do this, and why didn't
I do that," but neither spoke a word. Then we dropped into mutual
explanations, and the mystery was cleared away. It came out that Higbie
had depended on me, as I had on him, and as both of us had on the
foreman. The folly of it! It was the first time that ever staid and
steadfast Higbie had left an important matter to chance or failed to be
true to his full share of a responsibility.

But he had never seen my note till this moment, and this moment was the
first time he had been in the cabin since the day he had seen me last.
He, also, had left a note for me, on that same fatal afternoon--had
ridden up on horseback, and looked through the window, and being in a
hurry and not seeing me, had tossed the note into the cabin through a
broken pane. Here it was, on the floor, where it had remained
undisturbed for nine days:

"Don't fail to do the work before the ten days expire. W.
has passed through and given me notice. I am to join him at
Mono Lake, and we shall go on from there to-night. He says
he will find it this time, sure. CAL."

"W." meant Whiteman, of course. That thrice accursed "cement!"

That was the way of it. An old miner, like Higbie, could no more
withstand the fascination of a mysterious mining excitement like this
"cement" foolishness, than he could refrain from eating when he was
famishing. Higbie had been dreaming about the marvelous cement for
months; and now, against his better judgment, he had gone off and "taken
the chances" on my keeping secure a mine worth a million undiscovered
cement veins. They had not been followed this time. His riding out of
town in broad daylight was such a common-place thing to do that it had
not attracted any attention. He said they prosecuted their search in the
fastnesses of the mountains during nine days, without success; they could
not find the cement. Then a ghastly fear came over him that something
might have happened to prevent the doing of the necessary work to hold
the blind lead (though indeed he thought such a thing hardly possible),
and forthwith he started home with all speed. He would have reached
Esmeralda in time, but his horse broke down and he had to walk a great
part of the distance. And so it