ackle; but to Denver it was a relief, a
return to his old life after the delirium of an ugly dream. Even yet he
could not trace the flaw in his reasoning which had brought him to earth
with such a thump; but he knew, in general, that his error was the
common one of trying to run a mine on a shoestring. He had set up in
business as a mining magnate on eight hundred dollars and his nerve, and
Bible-Back Murray had busted him.

Upon that point, at least, Denver suffered no delusion; he knew that his
downfall had been planned from the first and that he had bit like a
sucker at the bait. Murray had dropped a few words and spit on the hook
and Denver had shipped him his ore. The rest, of course, was like
shooting fish in the Pan-handle--he had refused to buy the ore, leaving
Denver belly-up, to float away with other human debris. But there was
one thing yet that he could not understand--why had Murray closed down
his own mine? That was pulling it pretty strong, just to freeze out a
little prospector and rob him of a ton or two of ore; and yet Denver had
proof that it was true. He had staked a hobo who had come over the trail
and the hobo had told him what he knew. The diamond drill camp was
closed down and all the men had left, but the guard was still herding
the property. And the hobo had seen a girl at Pinal. She was easy to
look at but hard to talk to, so he had passed and hit the trail for
Globe.

Denver worked like a demon with a gang of Cousin Jacks, opposing the
swelling ground with lengths of railroad steel and pouring in the
concrete behind them; but all the time, by fits and snatches, the old
memories would press in upon him. He would think of Mother Trigedgo and
her glowing prophecies, which had turned out so wonderfully up to a
certain point and then had as suddenly gone wrong; and then he would
think of the beautiful artist with whom he was fated to fall in love,
and how, even there, his destiny had worked against him and led him to
sacrifice her love. For how could one hope to win the love of a woman if
he denied her his friendship first? And yet, if he accepted her as his
dearest friend, he would simply be inviting disaster.

It was all wrong, all foolish--he dismissed it from his mind as unworthy
of a thinking man--yet the words of the prophecy popped up in his head
like the memories of some evil dream. His hopes of sudden riches were
blasted forever, he had given up the thought of Drusilla; but the one
sin