, a face, a figure, and that is how my studio comes to be
filled with the men of Black Rock. There they are all about me. Graeme
and the men from the woods, Sandy, Baptiste, the Campbells, and in many
attitudes and groups old man Nelson; Craig, too, and his miners, Shaw,
Geordie, Nixon, and poor old Billy and the keeper of the League saloon.

It seemed as if I lived among them, and the illusion was greatly helped
by the vivid letters Graeme sent me from time to time. Brief notes came
now and then from Craig too, to whom I had sent a faithful account of
how I had brought Mrs. Mavor to her ship, and of how I had watched her
sail away with none too brave a face, as she held up her hand that bore
the miners' ring, and smiled with that deep light in her eyes. Ah!
those eyes have driven me to despair and made me fear that I am no great
painter after all, in spite of what my friends tell me who come in to
smoke my good cigars and praise my brush. I can get the brow and hair,
and mouth and pose, but the eyes! the eyes elude me--and the faces of
Mrs. Mavor on my wall, that the men praise and rave over, are not such
as I could show to any of the men from the mountains.

Graeme's letters tell me chiefly about Craig and his doings, and about
old man Nelson; while from Craig I hear about Graeme, and how he and
Nelson are standing at his back, and doing what they can to fill the gap
that never can be filled. The three are much together, I can see, and I
am glad for them all, but chiefly for Craig, whose face, grief-stricken
but resolute, and often gentle as a woman's, will not leave me nor let
me rest in peace.

The note of thanks he sent me was entirely characteristic. There were
no heroics, much less pining or self-pity. It was simple and manly, not
ignoring the pain but making much of the joy. And then they had their
work to do. That note, so clear, so manly, so nobly sensible, stiffens
my back yet at times.

In the spring came the startling news that Black Rock would soon be
no more. The mines were to close down on April 1. The company, having
allured the confiding public with enticing descriptions of marvellous
drifts, veins, assays, and prospects, and having expended vast sums of
the public's money in developing the mines till the assurance of their
reliability was absolutely final, calmly shut down and vanished. With
their vanishing vanishes Black Rock, not without loss and much deep
cursing on the part of the men brought s