hoist. He had boarded with
Virginia and had waved her a parting kiss--but this time it would be
some trammer. Wiley gave them all their time on general principles, but
he did not go down to witness the farewell. Whether the trammer kissed
her good-by or simply kissed her hand was immaterial to him now--and, in
case it might have been a millman or some miner underground, he laid off
the whole night shift. The night-watchman went too, and the stage the
following evening brought out a cook to start up the boarding-house.

Wiley did not guess it--he knew it--Virginia Huff was the witch who had
mixed the hell-broth that had raised up all this treachery against him.
She had poisoned his men's minds and incited them to vandalism, but it
would not happen again. He had been a fool to endure it so long; but she
could starve now, for all that he cared. If she thought she could twist
him like a ring around her finger while she egged on these men to wreck
his mill, she had one more guess coming and then she would be right, for
he had come to his senses at last. This was not the Virginia that he had
known and loved--the Virginia he had played with in his youth--but a
warped and embittered Virginia, a waspish, heartless vixen who had never
been anything but cold. She had worked him deliberately, resorting to
woman's wiles to gain what was not her due, and now when his mill was
smashed into kindling wood, she danced and laughed for joy.

What kind of a mind could a woman have, to do such a senseless thing and
then laugh at the man who had helped her? She was kind to her cats, the
neighbors all liked her, to everyone else she seemed human; but when it
came to him she was a devil of hate, a fiend of ruthless cunning. She
would tell him to his face--at three in the morning, when he had caught
her running away from the mill--that she hoped his old mill would be
ruined. And now, when the trammer or some other soft-head had sent one
of his sledges through the crusher, she was laughing up her sleeve. But
there was a hereafter coming for Virginia and her mother and they would
get no more favors from him. If they crept to his feet and said they
were starving he would tell them to get out and hustle. Meanwhile they
had sent him broke.

There would be no more ore concentrated in the Paymaster mill during
the life of his bond and lease; and unless he could raise some money,
and raise it quick, he was due to lose his mine. Whether he had
abetted