lling stamps, the same
columns of smoke from tall chimney and humble log structure, alike,
and the same careless clash of the breakers.

Bill came hurrying down the trail to meet him, waving his hat, and
shouting a welcome. Up at the yard the smith held a black hand and
muscled arm up to shade his eyes from the last sunlight, and then
shook a hammer aloft. From the door of the engine room the man who had
been Bells' assistant bawled a greeting, and the fat cook shook a
ladle at him through the mess-house window. It all gave him an immense
and satisfactory warmth of home-coming, and the Croix d'Or, with its
steadfast, friendly little colony, was home in truth!

"We're in sixty feet on the seven-hundred-foot," Bill grinned, with
the air of one giving a pleasant surprise, "and say, boy, we've hit
the edge of ore. You were all right. The green lead is still there,
only she looks better to me than she did before, and I know rock,
some."

There was nothing wanting in the pleasure of his return, and the last
addition to that satisfactory day was a note he found, lying on the
very top of other letters awaiting him. It was from Joan Presby, and
Bill, starting to enter the office, saw his partner's face in the
light of the lamp, smiled affectionately, and then tiptoed away into
the darkness, as if to avoid intrusion at such a time.

CHAPTER XVI

BENEFITS RETURNED

Dick waited impatiently at the rendezvous, saw Joan coming, hurried to
meet her, and was restrained from displaying his joy by her upheld
hand, as she smiled and cautioned: "Now, steady, Dick! You know we
were not to--to--be anything but comrades for a while yet."

He was compelled to respect her wishes, but his eyes spoke all that
his tongue might have uttered. In the joy of meeting her, he had
forgotten the part played by her father in his surreptitious attempt
to gain possession of the Croix d'Or: but her first words reminded him
of it:

"It has been terribly lonesome since you left. I have felt as if the
whole world had deserted me. Dad is not a cheery sort of companion,
because he is so absorbed by the Rattler that he lives with it, eats
with it, sleeps with it. And, to make him worse, something appears to
have upset him in the last week or ten days until a bear would be a
highly lovable companion by comparison."

She failed to notice the gravity of his face, for he surmised how
Sloan's answer must have affected the owner of the Rattler, who str