lman, had fully safeguarded his interests, for
by his other option he could buy all Blount's stock for the sum of five
cents a share. The four hundred thousand-odd shares would come to only
twenty thousand dollars, as against fifty thousand on the bond and
lease; and yet, by buying the stock at once, he could effectually debar
Blount from any share in the accumulating profits. The small payments on
past royalties and his five cents a share would be all that Blount would
receive; and then he would be left, a spectacle for gods and men--a
banker who had been beaten by a boy. It was the chicanery of Blount
which had ruined his father and driven Colonel Huff to his death, and
what could be better, as poetic justice, than to see him hoist on his
own petard. And if the Colonel was not dead--as would appear from
Charley's maunderings--if he could be discovered and brought back to
town, then surely Virginia would forget the old feud and consent to be
his wife. All this lay before him, a fairyland of imaginings, waiting
only her magic touch to make it real; just a word, a smile, a promise of
forgiveness--and of loyalty and love--and he, Wiley Holman, would go
whirling on the errand that would win him wealth and renown.

It would all be done for her, and yet he would not be the loser, for
his own father held two hundred thousand shares of Paymaster; and he
himself would save a fifty-thousand-dollar payment at an expense of a
little over twenty. And if the Colonel could be found quickly--or his
death disproved to make illegal the Widow's transfer of his
stock--then the mine could be claimed at once and Blount deprived even
of his royalties. Of course this could all be done without the help of
Virginia or the co-operation of any of the Huffs for, although his
father had refused from the first to have anything to do with the
mine, Wiley knew that he could talk him over and persuade him to pool
his stock. That would make six hundred thousand, a clean voting
majority and a fortune in itself; but for the sake of Virginia, and to
heal the ancient feud, it would be better to unite with the Huffs.

Wiley paced up and down in the crisp, dry snow and watched for Virginia
to come, and as his mind leapt ahead he saw her enthroned in a mansion,
with him as her faithful vassal--when he was not her lord and king. For
the Huffs were proud, even now in their poverty, and Virginia was the
proudest of them all; and in this, their first meeting, he m