l tackle it."

"Don't you attempt it!" she cried, clutching his arm and turning her
white face to him affrightedly. "Don't you ever dare try it!"

He laughed uneasily, his eyes on the black gash into which the foaming
river darted.

"Oh, I don't know; I've heard of men doing riskier things than that for
money," he returned.

Agnes Horton's excitement and concern seemed to pass with his words. She
propped her chin in her palms and sat pensively, looking at the broken
waters which reared around the barrier of scattered stones in its
channel.

"Yes, men sometimes take big risks for money--even the risk of honor and
the everlasting happiness of others," said she.

It was like the wind blowing aside a tent-flap as he passed, giving him
a glimpse of its intimate interior. That little lifting of her reserve
was a glance into the sanctuary of her heart. The melancholy of her eyes
was born out of somebody's escapade with money; he was ready to risk his
last guess on that.

"Besides, there may be nothing to that story of nuggets. That may be
just one of these western yarns," she added.

"Well, in any case, there's the five hundred the Denver paper offers,
besides what I could make by syndicating the account of my adventure
among the Sunday papers. I used to do quite a lot of that when I was in
college."

"But you don't need money badly enough to go into that place after it.
Nobody ever needed it that badly," she declared.

"Don't I?" he answered, a little biting of bitter sarcasm in his tone.
"Well, you don't know, my lady, how easy that money looks to me compared
to my ordinary channels of getting it."

"It can't be so very hard in your profession," she doubted, as if a bit
offended by his attitude of martyrdom before an unappreciative world. "I
don't believe you have half as hard a time of it as some who have too
much money."

"The hardship of having too much money is one which I never experienced,
so I can't say as to that," he said, moved to smiles by the humor of it.
"But to understand what I mean by hardship you must know how I've
struggled in the ruts and narrow traditions of my profession, and
fought, hoped, and starved. Why, I tell you that black hole over there
looks like an open door with a light inside of it compared to some of
the things I've gone through in the seven years that I've been trying to
get a start. Money? I'll tell you how that is, Miss Horton; I've thought
along that one theme so confoun