y man is her suitor," thought Serviss, with a twinge of
disapproval. "Think what she must seem to that leather-colored Arab
urging forward those donkeys!" And a knowledge of her danger--he put
it that way--began to oppress him. "She is too fine and sweet to marry
among these rough miners."

She, it seemed, was not afraid of mountaineers, for she had a gay nod
and a bright word for every one she met, though some of them were
brutal-mouthed and grimy and sullen. Serviss derived no comfort from
the fact that the most sinister of them brightened for an instant in
the light of her adorable smile.

At last, far ahead, they came in sight of the mill on a bare peak. The
white clouds which had been silently gathering round the great domes
swiftly overspread the whole sky. The air grew chill as November. The
wind began to roar in the firs with a stern mournfulness which went to
the heart of the man; but the girl, without once stopping her horse,
unrolled her raincoat and put it on, calling back at her cavalier as
she did so with a fine, challenging, gleeful shout.

They were very high now. Perennial ice lay in the gullies and on the
north side of the cliffs, and the air was light and keen. Suddenly the
wind died away. A gray hush came over the valley. The water in the
streams lost its vivid green and became lead-color streaked with white
foam. One by one the mountains were blotted out by the storm. The
world of sky and rocks grew mysterious, menacing; but the girl pushed
fearlessly forward, singing like a robin, while the rain slashed over
her, and the thunder boomed and re-echoed from crag to crag like
warning guns in magnificent alarums. "I love this!" she cried, her
clear voice piercing the veil of water like a flute note. "Don't you?"

Serviss was not without imagination, and the contrast of this jocund,
fearless, free young maid with the silent, constrained girl of the
night before moved him to wonder. "Here she is herself--nature's own
child," he thought. "Last night she was a 'subject'--a plaything of
the preacher's. Strange the mother does not realize her daughter's
danger."

The storm passed as quickly as it came, and when they drew rein at the
mine the sun was shining. The mill, standing on a smooth, steep slope,
and sheltered on the north by a group of low firs, seemed half a ruin,
but was, in fact, being rebuilt and enlarged. All about it were dumps
of clay, slippery with water, and rough bunk-houses and ore-shed