s just what I'm going to do. I'm going to put our friend
behind the bars for a few years," the smug little man cried
triumphantly.

The red spots on Moya's cheeks burned. The flashing eyes of the girl
defied her discarded lover.

"If you can," she amended with quiet anger.

The soft laugh of Joyce saved for the moment the situation. "Dear me,
aren't we getting a little excited? Mr. Bleyer, tell me more. How does
a--a highgrader, didn't you call him?--how does he get a chance to steal
the ore?"

"He picks out the best pieces while he is working--the nuggets that are
going to run a high per cent. of gold--and pockets them. At night he
carries them away."

"But--haven't you any policemen here? Why don't you stop them and search
them?"

"The miners' union is too strong. There would be a strike if we tried
it. But it has got to come to that soon. The companies will have to join
hands for a finish fight. They can't have men hoisted up from their work
with a hundred dollars' worth of ore stowed away on them."

"Is it as bad as that, Mr. Bleyer?" asked Lady Farquhar in surprise.

"Sometimes they take two or three hundred dollars' worth at once."

"They don't all steal, do they?" demanded Moya with an edge of sarcasm
in her clear voice.

Bleyer laughed grimly. "I'd like to know the names of even a few that
don't. I haven't been introduced to them."

"One hundred per cent. dishonest," murmured Moya without conviction.

"I don't guarantee the figures, Miss Dwight." The superintendent added
grudgingly: "They don't look at it that way. Bits of high-grade ore are
their perquisite, they pretend to think."

Verinder broke in. "They say your friend Kilmeny took ore to the value
of two thousand dollars from the Never Quit on one occasion. It ran to
that amount by actual smelter test, the story goes. I've always rather
doubted it."

"Why--since he is so dishonest?" Moya flung at him.

"Don't think a man could carry away so much at one time. What d'ye
think, Bleyer?"

"Depends on how high-grade ore the mine carries. At Cripple Creek we
found nearly four thousand on a man once. He was loaded down like a
freight car--looked like the fat boy in 'Pickwick Papers.'"

"Should think he'd bulge out with angles where the rock projected," Lady
Farquhar suggested.

"The men have it down to a system there. We used to search them as they
left work. They carry the ore in all sorts of unexpected places, such as
the shoulder paddin