t the nat'ral burning of that pit?"

"Certainly," said Lance, trying to see Flip's eyes, which were
resolutely averted.

"Thet's whar you'd be lyin'! That yar heat kem out of the bowels of the
yearth,--kem up like out of a chimbley or a blast, and kep up that yar
fire. And when she cools down a month after, and I got to strip her,
there was a hole in the yearth, and a spring o' bilin', scaldin' water
pourin' out of it ez big as your waist. And right in the middle of it
was this yer." He rose with the instinct of a skillful raconteur, and
whisked from under his bunk a chamois leather bag, which he emptied
on the table before them. It contained a small fragment of native rock
crystal, half-fused upon a petrified bit of pine. It was so glaringly
truthful, so really what it purported to be, that the most unscientific
woodman or pioneer would have understood it at a glance. Lance raised
his mirthful eyes to Flip.

"It was cooled suddint,--stunted by the water," said the girl, eagerly.
She stopped, and as abruptly turned away her eyes and her reddened face.

"That's it, that's just it," continued the old man. "Thar's Flip, thar,
knows it; she ain't no fool!" Lance did not speak, but turned a hard,
unsympathizing look upon the old man, and rose almost roughly. The old
man clutched his coat. "That's it, ye see. The carbon's just turning to
di'mens. And stunted. And why? 'Cos the heat wasn't kep up long enough.
Mebbe yer think I stopped thar? That ain't me. Thar's a pit out yar in
the woods ez hez been burning six months; it hain't, in course, got the
advantages o' the old one, for it's nat'ral heat. But I'm keeping that
heat up. I've got a hole where I kin watch it every four hours. When
the time comes, I'm thar! Don't you see? That's me! that's David
Fairley,--that's the old man,--you bet!"

"That's so," said Lance, curtly. "And now, Mr. Fairley, if you'll
hand me over a coat or a jacket till I can get past these fogs on the
Monterey road, I won't keep you from your diamond pit." He threw down a
handful of silver on the table.

"Ther's a deerskin jacket yer," said the old man, "that one o' them
vaqueros left for the price of a bottle of whiskey."

"I reckon it wouldn't suit the stranger," said Flip, dubiously producing
a much-worn, slashed, and braided vaquero's jacket. But it did suit
Lance, who found it warm, and also had suddenly found a certain
satisfaction in opposing Flip. When he had put it on, and nodded coldly