de-open eyes. It was a well-paid animal life. It
was a life of eating well, of sleeping well, of gambling, and drinking,
and licence. But it was a life of such labour that only perfect
physical creatures could face.

She felt that these folks were wage slaves in the crudest meaning of the
words. There was nothing for them beyond their daily life, which was
wholly animal. Of spirituality there was none. Of future there was none.
Their leisure was given over to their pastimes, while ahead the future
lay always threatening. Stiffening muscles, disease, age. The king of
them all in his youth, in age would be abandoned and driven forth, weary
in body, aching in limbs, a derelict in the ranks of the world's labour.

She was gravely impressed by the things she saw, by the men she met.

Her summer had been an education which had stirred feelings and
sympathies almost unguessed. It was the father, she could scarcely
remember, making himself known to her. For all the ambitions firing her,
the long, fascinating days in the forests of the Shagaunty had taught
her of the existence of an "underdog," who, in himself, was the
foundation upon which the personal ambition of the more fortunate was
achieved. Without him to support the whole edifice of civilisation must
crash to the ground, and life would go back again to the bosom of that
Nature from which it sprang.

Her realisation inspired her with an added desire. It was a desire
coming straight from an honest, unsophisticated heart. She registered a
vow that whithersoever her ambitions might lead her, she would always
remember the "underdog," and work for his betterment and greater
happiness.

"So you can only cut the stuff here within reach of our light haulage
system?" Nancy demanded at last. "The rest's gone. The real big stuff, I
mean, down below in the valley. We're just driven to the plateau where
the cut looks to me more like one in twenty than any better?"

Arden Laval left his position at the brink of the ravine. He came back
to the girl in her modish costume that seemed so out of place beside the
rough clothing that Covered his body.

"Why, I guess that's so," he said. "Still, it's a deal better than one
in twenty." He laughed. "Sure. If it wasn't the darn booms 'ud need to
go hungry."

The man's French temperament left him more than appreciative of the
beauty he beheld. But he was wondering. He was searching his shrewd mind
for the real explanation of Nancy's prese