ted samples carried values as high as twenty-five dollars
in gold--not to the ton; oh, no; nothing like that: _to the pound_!

Barrett had the situation firmly by the neck when we left the sampling
works.

"I have a sort of provisional arrangement with Mr. Conaughy, our
president, and I can quit the bank without notice and explain
afterward," he said. "I'm going right back with you to-night. Three
of us will be none too many to handle this thing when the news gets
out."

We went to his room first and loaded up with blankets, working clothes,
a shot-gun and a generous supply of fixed ammunition. On the long
tramp up the mountain, Barrett, who was older in the district than
either Gifford or myself, told me what we might expect.

"You needn't think we are going to be allowed to dig that hole without
the toughest kind of a fight, Jimmie," he predicted. "The minute the
news gets loose, we shall be swamped with 'interferences,' relocations,
law-suits, process servers and constables, to say nothing of the
strong-hands and claim-jumpers. The Lawrenceburg people will doubtless
claim that mistakes were made in their surveys, as perhaps there were.
They've got a first-class fighting man for a superintendent; as I
happen to know: a man who won't stick at anything to carry his end."

"But it's our strike," I urged.

"It's ours if we can hold it," was the sober reply. "Our best play is
to keep the thing absolutely dark until we can dig out enough money to
give us a fighting fund. That's where we're lame. Our bit of capital
won't go anywhere when they drag us into the courts."

Our shortest way to the new claim led us in sight of the Lawrenceburg
workings. They were running night shifts, and though it was now well
along in the small hours, the plant was in full swing. Like most of
the mines within trolley distance of the towns, it had no miners'
village, the men going back and forth at the shift-changing hours. But
the superintendent lived at the plant, and there were a few bunk houses
and one other detached cottage.

There was a light in one room of this cottage as we passed, and Barrett
called my attention to it.

"There's a man in that shack that I hope we may be able to get, if we
ever grow big enough to hire him," he said. Then he added, quite
irrelevantly: "He has a daughter, and I'm telling you right now,
Jimmie, she's a peach."

I let the reference to the daughter go by default.

"Who is this gentlem