the mere ghost of a mine. A loose strip of
zinc on the corrugated-iron mill drummed and shuddered in a menacing
undertone and at uncertain intervals some door inside smote its frame
with a resounding bang. Straining timbers creaked and groaned, the wind
mourned like a disembodied spirit, and as Wiley Holman jumped at a
sudden sound he turned and glanced nervously behind him.

It was not a shadow but the passing of a shadow that caught his roving
eye and as he stripped off his wind-goggles and looked again he felt by
instinct for his six-shooter. But it was not on his hip. He had taken
his pick instead, and for the first time he felt a thrill of fear--not
fear for his life nor of anything tangible, but that old, primordial
fear of the night that only a gun can banish. He picked up a rock and
walked back down the trail; but nothing leapt forth at him--even the
shadow was gone, and he threw the rock petulantly away. It was the wind,
and the noises, and the blinders on his goggles; but now that the great
fear was born he jumped at every sound. He had been out before on worse
nights than this--what was it, then, that he feared? With his back
against a rock he stared about and listened until at last his nerve
returned; then he went boldly to the dump, where the white quartz lay
the thickest, and began to dig a hole with his pick.

Deep as he could dig there was nothing but the white waste and he paced
off the width of the pile; then very systematically he moved across the
slope, grabbing handfuls of fine dirt at measured intervals and throwing
them into an ore-sack. There was something about Virginia's piece of
"barren quartz" that had appealed to his prospector's eye and even in
the excitement of meeting the Widow he had not forgotten to sequester
it. But a piece of rock from a girl's case of specimens is a far call
from "ore in place" and he had come back that night to look the mine
over and collect an average sample from the dump. There were hundreds of
tons of that rock on the dump and it certainly was his right, as a part
owner in the property, to sample it and have it assayed.

Back and forth across the slide, now buffeted by the wind, now pelted by
loosened stones, he continued his methodical test and then as he knelt
to dig out a hole a great rock came bounding past. It came out of the
darkness and went smashing down the hillside like some terrific engine
of destruction and before he had more than scrambled from its