e's the boy for me. Why, he hadn't been there two days before there was
trouble, and at the end of the week we was reckoning up he had made five
corpses over it."

He looked round the circle, and there was a murmur of admiring assent.

The old miner nodded his head slowly as he munched his beans.

"Yes, that's Talbot's way; he's just as smooth as butter as long as you
know he's the boss and act accordin', but jest as soon as you begin to
try and boss him, you'll know you have your hands full."

Dick took another pull at the tin whisky bottle, and tightened his belt.

As the men returned to their work they were surprised to see their
employer leaning idly against his window, and still more surprised when
they passed round to the main entrance to find the great door shut.
Talbot came himself and let each man in, in turn as they came up,
shutting the door afterwards. Their curiosity at this unusual state of
things was great, but there was a look on the pale, stern face they
encountered on the threshold that froze all open question or comment,
and each man went by silently to his work. When they got down towards
the shaft and out of hearing, however, their tongues were loosened
again.

"'E's waiting for Dick to come back, that's what he is," volunteered one
of the miners; "and somehow or other I don't feel jest dying to be in
Dick's shoes when he do come."

There was no dissent openly offered to this guarded opinion. Most of the
men hung about in the tunnel, and seemed unwilling to quit the scene of
the coming contest.

At last, among the final batch of men, Marley came sauntering past the
window. Talbot's eyes flashed as the tiger's when the brush crackles.
He walked out to the great door and flung it wide open. Dick fell back a
step, and the little crowd of miners who accompanied him closed in round
the two, open mouthed and eyed, to see the battle.

"You can't come in," and the sentence had an accent of inflexibility
that made it seem like a drawn sword across the entrance.

"To hell I can't!" returned Dick, a dull red flush coming over his face.

"No, you can't," Talbot replied in the same calm, incisive way, that
contrasted strongly with the coarse, whisky-thickened tone of the other.

"Oh well, I guess I'm coming in any way," answered Marley, and he made a
step forward. A slight motion of Talbot's right hand to his belt was his
only answer.

Marley stopped, put his own hand, half involuntarily, to his hi