ll_ my Skunk's Misery clothes had disappeared, and Charliet had not
taken them, because I asked him. I did not mention last night's wolf to
him, because I was in a hurry to catch Dudley and tell him I meant to
leave La Chance. But I did not tell him, for when I thought of leaving
my dream girl to him it would not come to my tongue. An obstinate,
matter-of-fact devil got up in my heart instead and prompted me to stay
just where I was. I looked at Dudley--little, fat, pompous, and so
self-opinionated that it fairly stuck out of him--and thought that if I
had a fair chance I could take my dream girl from him. I might be dark
as an Indian and without a cent to my name except the few dollars I had
sunk in the mine, but I did not drink or eat drugs; and I knew Dudley
did one and guessed he did the other. Interfering with him was out of
the question, of course; it was not a thing any man could do to his
friend, deliberately. I supposed he would be good to the girl, according
to his lights. But, all the same, I decided to stay at La Chance. I saw
Dudley was brimming over with something secret, and I hoped to heaven it
was not his engagement, and that I should not have to stand my own
thoughts of a girl translated into Dudley's. But he did not mention her.
He hooked his fat wrist into my elbow and trotted me down to the mine.

It was an amateur sort of mine, as you may have gathered. Dudley had no
use for expert assistance or for advice. And it was a simple looking
place. The shore of Lac Tremblant there ran back flat to a hill, a
quarter of a mile from the water, with a solid rock face like a cliff.
Along that cliff face came first Dudley's shack, then Thompson's tunnel,
then--a good way farther down--the bunk house, the mill, and a shanty
Dudley called the assay office. But I stared at a new hole in the cliff,
farther down even than the assay office.

"Why, you've driven a new tunnel," I exclaimed.

"Yes, my young son," said Dudley; and then he burst out with things.
Macartney had run that new tunnel as soon as he came and struck quartz
that was solid for heaven knew how far, and carrying thick, free gold
that assayed incredibly to the ton. The La Chance mine, whose name had
been more truth than poetry--for when I made fifty miles of road that
cost like the devil, to haul in machinery and a mill it was pitch and
toss if we should ever need it--had turned out a certainty while I was
away.

I stood silent. It meant plenty to