mbling
brown rock with that marvellous intuitive knowledge which is so
important an element in the equipment of your true prospector. But it is
only an element. By all the rules of the game Peter should have failed
long since, should have "cashed in and quit" some five years back; and
still he grubbed away cheerfully at divers mountains and many ranges. He
had not succeeded; still, he had not failed.

Three times had he made his "strike." On the first of these three
occasions he had gone in with two San Francisco men to develop the
property. The San Francisco men had persuaded him to form a stock
company of certain capitalisation. In two deals they had "frozen out"
Peter completely, and reorganised on a basis which is paying them good
dividends. Returning overwhelmed with sophistries and "explanations"
from his expostulatory interview, Peter decided he knew more about
quartz leads than about business and the disgorging of gains, so he went
over into Idaho to try again. There he found the famous Antelope Gap
lode. This time he determined to sell outright and have nothing more to
do with the matter after the transfer of the property. He drew up the
deeds, received a small amount down, and took notes for the balance.
When the notes came due he could not collect them. The mine had been
resold to third parties. Peter had no money to contest the affair; and
probably would not have done so if he had. He knew too little--or too
much--of law; but the instinct was his, so he moved one State farther
east to Montana for his third trial. This resulted in the Eagle Ridge.
And for the third time he was swindled by a persuasive man and a lying
one-sided contract.

A sordid, silly enough little tale, is it not? but that is why men
wondered at Peter's survival, marvelled at the recuperative force that
made possible his fourth attempt, speculated with a certain awe over
that cheerful disposition which had earned him, even in his adversity,
the sobriquet of Happy Peter.

All of these phenomena, had they but known it, resulted from one simple
cause. Peter's mental retrospect for a considerable space would have
conjured up nothing but a succession of grand sweeps of mountains,
singing pines, rare western skies, and the simplicity of a
frontiersman's log-cabin; and yet to his inner vision over the border of
that space lay a very different scene. It was the scene he saw the
oftenest. Oftenest? he saw it always; across the mountains, through