e road. "Even Ned says he's the jolliest
fellow in town, all but Howard."

"Yes, 't is good to have him here," said Allie contentedly, as she
slipped on her shoe and stooped to button it up. "He's just as
good-natured and nice as he can be; and I think I like him better than
any boy I ever saw, except Howard, even if he hasn't been here quite a
month."

"Not better than Ned?" Marjorie exclaimed incredulously.

"Well--no--I don't know," said Allie, wavering a little. "Ned's just
about as near right as he can be; but I believe, after all, I'd rather
live in the house with Charlie. Ned might be a little too peppery for a
steady diet."

"I never thought you'd turn a cold shoulder to Ned," said Marjorie,
shaking her head over Allie's defection. "Charlie's very nice and
gentlemanly, and all that, but I don't believe he has half Ned's pluck.
Do you remember the time he sprained his wrist falling off his pony, way
up the gulch, and wouldn't tell of it till we were home again? I don't
think Charlie Mac would stand that kind of thing long. There's no
special reason he shouldn't be agreeable; we've all of us tried our best
to make him have a good time."

"Charlie isn't a baby, though," returned Allie, valiantly rising to the
defence of her cousin. "You think, just because he knows more about
music than 'most anybody else in the camp, and looks and acts as if he
came from a city, that he's more than half girl. But I'll tell you he
isn't, Marjorie, and if anything came to try him, you'd find he'd come
up to the mark every bit as well as Ned. I don't know as I care to have
anything happen, though, just for the sake of proving it."

In the mean time, the subject of the conversation was walking rapidly in
the direction of the smelter, whose pile of huge red buildings lay a
little to the southeast of the town, across the creek and close to the
foot of the mountain which towered above it sheer and straight. A few
hundred feet down the canon below it, and a little farther back from the
creek, was the shaft leading down into the mine, and beside it the
engine house with the machinery needful for raising the ore, and for
carrying the miners to and from the cross-cuts, hundreds of feet below.

Though he had often been to the smelter with Ned and Grant, it was the
first time that Charlie had visited the place alone. He felt very small
and insignificant, as he stepped inside the enclosure, with its array of
great buildings, mammoth chi