k lay a red like that on the back of his hand. In the semi-twilight
his eyes grew luminous. Very tenderly he raised the tear-stained face
and looked reverently into the dewy pools brimming over with that which
made him close them with a kiss.

"Sweetheart!" he said softly. "Sweetheart!"

She put her white arms about his neck, and, clinging to him as though
she would never let go, cried as if her heart would break.

From the head of the waterfall where she washed the jagged wound in his
head, Douglass looking down to where she had thrown the dynamite, noted
that the whole hillside was changed in appearance. Where once had been a
shoulder-deep mass of loose slide-rock was now the bare face of the
mountain, out of which cropped a ten-foot wide ledge of parti-colored
rock which he instantly, even at that considerable distance, classified
as quartz. In that one comprehensive glance he divined the whole truth.
As a result of the violent explosion, the mass of loose rock had been
set in motion and an avalanche had ensued; the whole mountain side had
been denuded of its covering of detritus which now lay heaped up at the
base of the declivity.

In the clear light a sheen glittered over those portions of the ledge
where its surface had been freshly abraded by the mass of rock grinding
over it in the avalanche's descent; it was indubitably quartz, quartz in
place, the only body of it found in situ so far on that mountain. His
rich float had been of quartz gangue! Very quietly he turned and put his
arms about the girl, conviction growing every minute.

"Dearie, I think you have killed two birds with one stone. Do you see
that projecting ledge of rock yonder? I am certain it is the blind lode
I have been looking for. If it is, we will be rich beyond the wildest
dreams of avarice."

She laughed shyly and took his face between both pink palms.

"I am that already, Ken, dear." Very rich indeed was the treasure she
laid on his lips. He caught her up to him fiercely, his face as white as
the kerchief which she had bound about his brow. Unconsciously he was
bruising her soft flesh, but she gloried in the pain of it.

Red McVey, coming over the crest of the ridge to investigate the
explosion and the succeeding rumble of the avalanche which he had heard
while hunting on the other slope, paused abruptly at sight of that
tender tableau. Very cautiously, as one coming suddenly in the hunting
trail upon a dangerous beast who is as yet