urely
agricultural county of Merton. It was a single-track railroad; but at
every siding--and they were numerous--long lines of trucks piled with
coal and iron ore told of the hidden wealth which had brought a rude
population and a bustling life to this most desolate corner of the
United States of America.

For desolate it was! Little could the first pioneer who had traversed
it have ever imagined that the fairest prairies and the most lush water
pastures were valueless compared to this gloomy land of black crag and
tangled forest. Above the dark and often scarcely penetrable woods upon
their flanks, the high, bare crowns of the mountains, white snow, and
jagged rock towered upon each flank, leaving a long, winding, tortuous
valley in the centre. Up this the little train was slowly crawling.

The oil lamps had just been lit in the leading passenger car, a long,
bare carriage in which some twenty or thirty people were seated. The
greater number of these were workmen returning from their day's toil in
the lower part of the valley. At least a dozen, by their grimed faces
and the safety lanterns which they carried, proclaimed themselves
miners. These sat smoking in a group and conversed in low voices,
glancing occasionally at two men on the opposite side of the car, whose
uniforms and badges showed them to be policemen.

Several women of the labouring class and one or two travellers who
might have been small local storekeepers made up the rest of the
company, with the exception of one young man in a corner by himself. It
is with this man that we are concerned. Take a good look at him, for he
is worth it.

He is a fresh-complexioned, middle-sized young man, not far, one would
guess, from his thirtieth year. He has large, shrewd, humorous gray
eyes which twinkle inquiringly from time to time as he looks round
through his spectacles at the people about him. It is easy to see that
he is of a sociable and possibly simple disposition, anxious to be
friendly to all men. Anyone could pick him at once as gregarious in his
habits and communicative in his nature, with a quick wit and a ready
smile. And yet the man who studied him more closely might discern a
certain firmness of jaw and grim tightness about the lips which would
warn him that there were depths beyond, and that this pleasant,
brown-haired young Irishman might conceivably leave his mark for good
or evil upon any society to which he was introduced.

Having made one o