with him? He's
just as likely to pour his money into the first lap that opens for it,"
said Stacy.

"The more reason why we shouldn't prevent him, or seem to prevent him,"
said Demorest almost fiercely. "There will be knaves and fools enough
who will try and put the idea of our using him into his simple heart
without that. No! Let him do as he likes with it--but let him be
himself. I'd rather have him come back to us even after he's lost the
money--his old self and empty-handed--than try to change the stuff God
put into him and make him more like others."

The tone and manner were so different from Demorest's usual levity that
Stacy was silent. After a pause he said: "Well! we shall miss him on the
hillside--won't we?"

Demorest did not reply. Reaching out his hand abstractedly, he wrenched
off a small slip from a sapling near him, and began slowly to pull the
leaves off, one by one, until they were all gone. Then he switched it in
the air, struck his bootleg smartly with it, said roughly: "Come, let's
get to work!" and strode away.

Meantime Barker on his way to Boomville was no less singular in his
manner. He kept up his slightly affected attitude until he had lost
sight of the cabin. But, being of a simple nature, his emotions were
less complex. If he had not seen the undoubted look of affection in the
eyes of his partners he would have imagined that they were jealous of
his good fortune. Yet why had they refused his offer to share it with
him? Why had they so strangely assumed that their partnership with him
had closed? Why had they declined to go with him? Why had this
money--of which he had thought so little, and for which he had cared
so little--changed them toward him? It had not changed HIM--HE was
the same! He remembered how they had often talked and laughed over
a prospective "strike" in mining and speculated what THEY would do
together with the money! And now that "luck" had occurred to one of
them, individually, the effect was only to alienate them! He could not
make it out. He was hurt, wounded--yet oddly enough he was conscious now
of a certain power within him to hurt and wound in retribution. He was
rich: he would let them see HE could do without them. He was quite free
now to think only of himself and Kitty.

For it must be recorded that with all this young gentleman's simplicity
and unselfishness, with all his loyal attitude to his partners, his
FIRST thought at the moment he grasped the fact o