t nothing had changed; yet they
knew it had changed and in the sharing of that great secret lay the tie
that should bind them together. Denver looked from the eagle to the
glorious woman and remembered the prophecy again. Even yet he must
beware, he must veil every glance, treat her still like a simple country
child; for the seeress had warned him that his fate hung in the balance
and she might still confer her hand upon another.

In the happy days that followed he did no more work, further than to
sack his ore and ship it; but all his thoughts were centered upon
Drusilla who was friendly and elusive by turns. On that first precious
evening she came up with her father and inspected his smoke-blackened
cave, and over his new records there sprang up a conversation that held
him entranced for hours. She had been to the Metropolitan and the Boston
Opera Houses and heard the great singers at their best; she understood
their language, whether it was French or Italian or the now proscribed
German of Wagner, and she listened to the records again and again,
trying to steal the secret of their success. But through it all she was
gentle and friendly, and all her old quarrelsomeness was gone.

A week passed like a day, full of dreams and half-uttered confidences
and long, contented silences; and then, as they sat in the shade of the
giant sycamore Denver let his eyes that had been fixed upon Drusilla,
stray and sweep the lower road.

"What are you looking for now?" she demanded impatiently and he turned
back with a guilty grin.

"McGraw," he said and she frowned to herself for at last the world had
come between them. For a week he had been idle, a heaven-sent companion
in the barren loneliness of life; but now, when his powder and mining
supplies arrived, he would become the old hard-working miner. He would
go into his dark tunnel before the sun was up and not come out till it
was low in the west, and instead of being clean and handsome as a young
god he would come forth like a groveling gnome. His face would be grimy,
his hands gnarled with striking, his digging-clothes covered with
candle-grease: and his body would reek with salty sweat and the rank,
muggy odor of powder fumes. And he would crawl back to his cave like an
outworn beast of burden, to sleep while she sang to him from below.

"Will you go back to work?" she asked at last and he nodded and
stretched his great arms.

"Back to work!" he repeated, "and I guess it's