ction with lime. The others
are combined variously with iron or manganese----"

"Yes, manganese," broke in Charley importantly. "I know that well--and
wolfite and all the rest. It certainly is wonderful how they build them
big cannons that will shoot for twenty-two miles. But it's tungsden that
does it, tungsden in connection with electricity and the invisible rays
of raddium."

"Oh, shut up!" burst out the Widow, thrusting him rudely aside and
seizing a fresh handful of the rock. "I just can't hardly believe it."
She gazed at the glossy fragments and then at the muckers, industriously
loading the trucks; and then she cocked her head on one side.

"Let's see--two times twenty--that's forty dollars a ton. No--four
hundred! Why, no--four thousand!" She stopped short and made a hurried
re-calculation, while a murmur ran through the crowd, and then Death
Valley Charley gave a whoop.

"Four thousand!" he shouted. "I told ye! I knowed it! I claimed she was
rich, all the time!"

"You did not!" snapped the Widow, putting her hand under his jaw and
forcibly stifling his whoops. "You poor, crazy fool, you knew nothing of
the kind--you sold out for five thousand dollars!" She pushed him away
with a swift, disdainful shove that sent him reeling through the crowd
and then she whirled on Wiley. "And I suppose," she accused, "that you
knew all the time that this dump here was nothing but tungsten?"

"Well, I had a good idea," he admitted deprecatingly, "although it's yet
to be tested out. This is just a sample shipment----"

"Yes, a sample shipment; and at two dollars a pound how much will it
bring you in? Why, nothing, hardly; a mere bagatelle for a gentleman and
a scholar like you; but what about me and poor Virginia, slaving around
to cook your meals? What do we get for all our pains? Oh, I could kill
you, you scoundrel! You knew it all the time, and yet you let me sell
those shares!"

She choked and Wiley shifted uneasily on the ore-pile, for of course he
had done just that. To be sure he had urged her to sell them to his
father for the sum of ten cents a share; but the mention of that fact,
in her heated condition, would probably gain him nothing with the Widow.
She was gasping for breath and, if nothing intervened, he was in for the
scolding of his life. But it was all in the day's work and he glanced
about for Virginia, to seek comfort from her smiling eyes. She would
understand now why he had given her back her stock,