And a few sharp stones that we found," Betty nodded soberly.

Allen whistled softly.

"No, I should think not," he said slowly. "It's a wonder that with you
and your horses, too, in that small space, you didn't smother before aid
could reach you."

"We should have," spoke up Amy quickly, "if it hadn't been for Betty.
She was the one who kept us at it when we were ready to give up."

"Yes, and she was the one that kept at it when the rest of us _had_
given up," Mollie reminded her. "She was the one who kept digging until
she forced the hole through. If it hadn't been for her we would have all
given up and just died there, I guess."

Betty, who had been getting redder and redder through this recital of
her heroism, found it hard to meet Allen's eyes as he turned to her with
all his heart in his own.

"The girls give me altogether too much credit," she protested. "Anybody
will fight when he has his back against the wall. And now let's take
Allen to see Dan Higgins' mine," she added lightly. "Dan Higgins and his
daughter Meggy are great friends of ours, Allen, and I know you will
love them as much as we do."

"Your friends will always be mine," Allen assured her gallantly, and
they rode off gayly toward Gold Run.

On the way they told him a good deal of Dan Higgins and Meggy, and Allen
listened with sympathetic interest.

"That surely is tough," he said boyishly. "But of course his case is no
different from that of hundreds of others who have come out here to
'God's Country' in the hope of beating the daily grind and jumping to
fortune at one fell swoop. That sounds rather Irish, doesn't it?" he
added, with his contagious grin.

"You're right about that, I suppose," said Betty gravely. "As you say,
Dan Higgins is just one of a hundred others in the same pitiful fix. But
at least he has had his dreams and the excitement of gambling. He chose
this sort of life, and so we don't feel so awfully sorry for him. But it
is his daughter Meggy that we pity. She is really a wonderful girl,
Allen, and to condemn her to a life of work and poverty is really a
crime."

"Well, I didn't do it," said Allen plaintively, adding quickly as
Betty's face clouded: "I beg your pardon, little girl, I didn't mean to
be flippant. But, like her father, there are many others in the
position of this girl. A man can't choose to live a life like that
without dragging his family into it too."

"Then he shouldn't have a family," said Mollie ho