s head.

"There's not an hour to lose. It's going to storm; I must get done."

"I 'spose we can start." Banule looked dubious. "I'll try it, but I
think we'll have to quit."

_Was_ there anything more that could happen? Bruce asked himself in dumb
misery as he picked up his scoop and brush and mechanically went to work
when the pumps started and the water came.

His feet and hands were soon like ice but he was scarcely conscious of
the pain for his heart-ache was so much greater. As he pursued the
elusive quicksilver and worked the sand and gravel to the end of the box
all he could see was the stack of receipted bills which the work and
plant had cost, in shocking contrast to that tiny ball of amalgam lying
in the chamois-skin on the rock. He had spent all of $40,000 and he
doubted if he would take $20 from the entire clean-up as it now looked.

How could he break the news to Helen Dunbar? Where would he find the
courage to tell the unfriendly stockholders the exact truth? It was a
foregone conclusion that they would consider him a fakir and a crook.

It had to be done. As, in his imagination, he faced the ordeal he
unconsciously straightened up.

"Burt! Burt! come quick!" Banule was waving his arms frantically from
the platform of the pump-house. There was desperation in his cry for
help. He dashed back inside as soon as he saw Bruce jump out of the
sluice-box. Before Bruce reached the pump-house he heard Banule ringing
the telephone violently, and his frenzied shout:

"Shut down, Smaltz! Shut down! Where are you? Can't you hear? For God's
sake shut down, everything's burnin' up!"

He was ringing as though he would have torn the box loose from the wall
when Bruce reached the pump-house door. Bruce turned sick when he heard
the crackling of the burning motors and saw the electric flames.

"Somethin's happened in the power-house! I can't ring him! He must have
got a shock! Until I know what's wrong, I don't dare shut down for fear
I'll burn everything out up there!"

"_Keep her going!_" Bruce bounded through the door and dropped from the
platform. Then he threw off his hat as he always did when excited, and
ran. And how he ran! With his fists clenched and his arms tight against
his sides he ran as though the hip-boots were the seven-league boots of
fable.

In the stretch of deep sand he had to cross the weight was killing. The
drag of the heavy boots seemed to pull his legs from their sockets but
he did not