t had to be brought in on the backs of pack
mules, and where stone masons received unduly high wages. The repairs
to the plant would not prove so heavy; but after that? None knew
better than he the trials of expensive prospecting underground, the
long drives to end in nothing, the drifts that tapped no ore, the
ledges that promised to come in strongly, and led the worker on with
hope deferred until his purse was exhausted. The cruelty of nature
itself flaunting the golden will-o'-the-wisp in the blackness of the
earth.

He stood on a timber thrown carelessly on the brink of the gorge, and
suddenly thought how it happened to be there, and for what tragic
purpose it had served--a gallows. He shuddered, thinking of the
mentally distorted wretch who had died at its end, cursing as the men
of the Cross pushed him over to gasp and wrench his life away fifty
feet above the ruin he had wrought. He wondered where the man had been
buried, and hurried back along the pipe line to try and forget that
episode.

A little flutter of white from a clump of brush attracted his eyes,
and he extracted from the brambles a dainty handkerchief still
fragrant with the personality of the girl he loved. He lifted it to
his lips tightly, and, with a heart that was almost in pain, dropped
to the line, and sat on the pipe, bent, and utterly dejected. He sat
there for some minutes, and then a sound caused him to straighten
himself with a jerk. The black horse was thundering down the hill as
he had seen it on those other mornings when, looking backward, the
"world was young."

"I saw you, Mr. Townsend," Miss Presby said as he assisted her to
alight, and her voice was sympathetic and grave. "You are unhappy. I
don't blame you. I have heard all about it, and--well, I have had to
fight an hourly impulse to come to you ever since I heard the news.
Oh, my friend, believe me, I am so sorry! So sorry!"

He could not reply, lest his voice betray the emotions aroused by her
kindly sympathy. All his yearnings were fanned to flame by the cadence
of her voice and the softness of her eyes. Mechanically he resumed his
place on the pipe, and she seated herself by his side, half-facing
him. Her slender foot, booted, braced against the ground, and almost
touching his heavy miner's boot, tapped its toe on the sward as if she
were impatient to find words.

"It has been a little tough," he said; "but it seems less hard to me
now that I know you care."

He had bl