ld me to pack up that very day and he'd show me; he'd
show the world. The new University man named him an old fogy, did he?
He'd show him. Didn't he know more than any other man living about
geology? About the making of the earth and the minerals of the earth?
Was it any trick to find gold? Not in the dribbles, but such a mine as
never a miner drove a pick into yet?'

She sighed again and grew silent. Howard, toying idly with the spurs
in his hands, could at the moment find nothing to say.

'Dear old pops,' she said more softly in a moment. 'I am afraid that
his heart-breaking time is coming now--when he learns that it isn't so
easy to find gold, after all.'

'No,' said Howard slowly. 'No. It doesn't break a man's heart, for he
is always sure that it is coming the next day and the next and the
next. I've known them to go on that way until they died, and then know
in their hearts that they'd make a strike the next day--if only the
Lord would spare them twenty-four hours more.'

'I wanted father to bank our money,' went on Helen, her eyes darkening.
'I wanted to go to work, to earn something. I can teach. But he
wouldn't hear of it. He said--he said that if the time had come when
he couldn't support his own daughter it was high time he was dead.'

Howard nodded his understanding. 'He's a good sport, I tell you,' he
maintained warmly. 'And I like him. Who knows but that he may make
his ten-strike here after all? Or,' as he marked the droop of the
girl's mouth and understood how she must be thinking of how little was
left of their pittance, he added briskly, 'this is a better place than
the East any day; there are more chances. If a man is the right sort
there is always a chance for him. If you want to teach---- Well,
we've got schools out here, haven't we?'

Helen's eyes rounded at him. 'Have you? Where?'

'And bully good schools,' he insisted. 'There's the Big Springs school
not over ten miles off, over that way. You could have a job there
to-morrow, if you said the word.'

Her eyes brightened. 'There is a vacancy, then?'

'Well,' he admitted, 'I'm not so sure about that. There's a teacher
there, I believe. But,' and now it was his eyes that brightened, 'it
could be fixed somehow. Just leave it to John and me.'

She laughed at him and all her gaiety came surging back.

'Here I've been drawing a face a mile long,' she cried lightly, 'when
everything's all right as far as I can see in