ent Pine,--a clear case of stupid incompetence! Utter lack of
engineering skill was all that was keeping the Silent Pine from making a
fortune for its holders.

"The only trouble with that mine," said Jeff, "is they won't go deep
enough. They followed the vein down to where it kind o' thinned out and
then they quit. If they'd just go right into her good, they'd get it
again. She's down there all right."

But perhaps the meanest case of all was the Northern Star. That always
seemed to me, every time I heard of it, a straight case for the criminal
law. The thing was so evidently a conspiracy.

"I bought her," said Jeff, "at thirty-two, and she stayed right there
tight, like she was stuck. Then a bunch of these fellers in the city
started to drive her down and they got her pushed down to twenty-four,
and I held on to her and they shoved her down to twenty-one. This
morning they've got her down to sixteen, but I don't mean to let go. No,
sir."

In another fortnight they shoved her, the same unscrupulous crowd, down
to nine cents, and Jefferson still held on. "They're working her down,"
he admitted, "but I'm holding her."

No conflict between vice and virtue was ever grimmer.

"She's at six," said Jeff, "but I've got her. They can't squeeze me."

A few days after that, the same criminal gang had her down further than
ever.

"They've got her down to three cents," said Jeff, "but I'm with her.
Yes, sir, they think they can shove her clean off the market, but
they can't do it. I've boughten in Johnson's shares, and the whole of
Netley's, and I'll stay with her till she breaks."

So they shoved and pushed and clawed her down--that unseen nefarious
crowd in the city--and Jeff held on to her and they writhed and twisted
at his grip, and then--

And then--well, that's just the queer thing about the mining business.
Why, sudden as a flash of lightning, it seemed, the news came over the
wire to the Mariposa Newspacket, that they had struck a vein of silver
in the Northern Star as thick as a sidewalk, and that the stock had
jumped to seventeen dollars a share, and even at that you couldn't get
it! And Jeff stood there flushed and half-staggered against the mirror
of the little shop, with a bunch of mining scrip in his hand that was
worth forty thousand dollars!

Excitement! It was all over the town in a minutes. They ran off a news
extra at the Mariposa Newspacket, and in less than no time there wasn't
standing room in t