leads to nothing. Are you too proud to take a
trifling favor because it comes through me?"

Weston met her gaze, and there was a grave forcefulness in his manner
which almost astonished her. He evidently for once had suffered his
usual self-restraint to relax, and she felt it was almost a pity that
he had not done so more frequently.

"Miss Stirling," he said, "you are, as it happens, one of the few
people from whom I could not take a favor of that kind."

She understood him, and for a moment a flicker of color crept into her
cheek. It was, she felt, a clean pride that had impelled him to the
speech. There were, she admitted, no benefits within her command that
she would not gladly have thrust upon him; but, for all that, she
would not have had him quietly acquiesce in them. Perhaps she was
singular in this, but her forebears had laid the foundations of a new
land's future with ax and drill, clearing forest and breaking prairie
with stubborn valor and toil incredible. They had flung their wagon
roads over thundering rivers and grappled with stubborn rock, and
among them the soft-handed man who sought advancement through a
woman's favor was, as a rule, regarded with quiet scorn. She said
nothing, however, and it was a few moments before Weston looked at her
again.

"Anyway," he said, "I couldn't do what you suggest. I am going back
into the ranges with Grenfell to look for the mine."

"Ah," said Ida, "you haven't given up that notion yet?"

The man smiled grimly.

"I am keener about it than ever. Perhaps it's somewhat curious, but I
seem certain that we shall strike that quartz lead one of these days."

Ida was glad to let the conversation take this new turn, for she
understood his eagerness now, and she had felt that they were skirting
a crisis each time she had talked with him of late. She had the
courage to make a sacrifice, and, indeed, had the occasion arisen,
would probably have considered none too costly; but it seemed due to
him as well as to her that he should at least make some strenuous
effort to pull down the barriers between them.

"Well," she said quietly, "it is very curious that you discovered no
trace of it. You said you found Grenfell's partner lying dead upon the
range, and, as their provisions were running out when he left the
lake, he could not have gone very far. Was it a big lake?"

"It couldn't have been. Grenfell said he walked round it in a couple
of hours."

Ida looked thoughtful.