as
bent on doing much the same. At length Weston turned to him with a wry
smile.

"It's quite possible that you're right, and the thing is too big for
me, but I have got to see it out," he said.

Stirling made a little sign of comprehension. His companion's
quietness pleased him, and he felt that, though the man must fight
with indifferent weapons and with formidable powers against him, he
would not easily be beaten. What was more to the purpose, the
contractor did not mean him to be beaten at all, if he could prevent
it, though this was a point that he did not consider it advisable to
mention.

"Well," he said reassuringly, "no one can tell exactly how a game of
this kind will go. All you can do is to hold tight and keep your eyes
open."

They changed the subject, and nothing more was said about the mine
during the rest of the journey.

In due time Stirling went ashore at a way port, and Weston met the man
from Chicago in Winnipeg a day or two later. The latter asked a good
many questions about the mine, but he contented himself with stating
that the matter would require investigation, and Weston, who gave him
a small bag of specimens, spent another day in Winnipeg in a very
dejected mood. He felt the hideous cruelty of the system which, within
certain rather ample limits, made it a legitimate thing to crush the
little man and rob him of his few possessions by any means available.
There was, it seemed, no mercy shown to weaklings in the arena he had
rashly entered with none of the weapons that the command of money
supplied to those pitted against him; but in place of shrinking from
the conflict a slow, smoldering rage crept into his heart.

He remembered the weary marches made in scorching heat and stinging
frost, how his shoulders had been rubbed raw by the pack-straps, and
how his burst boots had galled his bleeding feet. There had been long
nights of misery when he had lain, half-fed and too cold to sleep,
wrapped in dripping blankets beside a feeble, sputtering fire, while
the deluge thrashed the roaring pines. The bustle of the city jarred
on him that afternoon, and he wandered out of it, but the march,
parched with thirst, through the feathery ashes of the brulee, rose up
in his memory as he walked aimlessly toward the prairie, and he
recalled Grenfell lying beside the lode he had died to find. It became
a grim duty to hold his own, and once more he determined that his
enemies should crush him before the