been brutally unkind to her. Was she to blame because he was too poor to
support her properly? He ought to thank her for having the good sense
not to tie herself like a millstone about his neck. They could not live
on love just because for the moment passion had swept them from their
feet. Instead of being angry at her, he should sympathize with her for
being the victim of a pressure which had driven her to a disagreeable
duty.

Her simmering anger received a fillip from an accidental meeting with
Kilmeny, the first since the night of her engagement. Joyce and Moya
were coming out of a stationer's when they came face to face with the
miner.

The eyes of the young man visibly hardened. He shook hands with them
both and exchanged the usual inane greetings as to the weather. It was
just as they were parting that he sent his barbed shot into Joyce.

"I mustn't keep you longer, Miss Seldon. One can guess how keen you
must be to get back to Verinder. Love's young dream, and that sort of
thing, eh?"

The jeer that ran through his masked insolence brought the angry color
to the cheeks of Joyce. She bit her lip to keep back tears of vexation,
but it was not until she was in her room with Moya that the need for a
confidant overflowed into speech.

"Did you ever hear anything so hateful? He made love to me on the
hill.... I let him.... He knows I ... am fond of him. I told him that I
loved him. And now...."

Moya stared at her in amaze. "Do you mean that you let Mr. Kilmeny make
love to you an hour or two before you became engaged to Mr. Verinder?"

"For Heaven's sake, don't be a prude, Moya," Joyce snapped irritably. "I
told you I was fond of him, didn't I? How could I help his kissing
me ... or help liking to have him? He ought to be glad. Instead, he
insults me." Miss Seldon's self-pity reached the acute stage of sobs.
"I was in love with him. Why is he so hard?"

"Perhaps he thinks that since he is in love with you and you with him
that gives him some claim," Moya suggested dryly.

"Of course that's what he thinks. But it's absurd. I'm not going to
marry Dobyans Verinder because I want to. He knows that as well as you
do. Why does he blame me, then? Goodness knows, it's hard enough to
marry the man without having my friends misunderstand."

Moya asked an unnecessary question. "Why do you marry him, then?"

"You know perfectly well," flashed Joyce petulantly. "I'm taking him
because I must."

"Like a bad-tasting dose of medicine?"

Her friend nodded. "I _can't_ let him go. I just _can't_. Jack Kilmeny
ought to see that."

"Oh, he sees it, but you can't blame him for being bitter."

At the recollection of his impudence anger flared up in Joyce.

"Let him be as bitter as he pleases, then. I happen to know something he
would give a good deal to learn. Mr. Jack Kilmeny is going to get into
trouble this very night. They've laid a plot----"

She stopped, warned by the tense stillness of Moya.

"Yes?" asked the Irish girl.

"Oh, well! It doesn't matter."

"Who has laid a plot?"

"I've no business to tell. I just happened to overhear something."

"What did you overhear?"

"Nothing much."

"I want to know just what you heard."

Against the quiet steadfast determination of this girl Joyce had no
chance. A spirit that did not know defeat inhabited the slender body.

Bit by bit Moya forced out of her the snatch of conversation she had
overheard while at breakfast.

"It's a secret. You're not to tell anyone," Joyce protested.

Her friend drummed on the arm of the chair with the tips of her fingers.
She was greatly troubled at what she had learned. She was a young woman,
singularly stanch to her friends, and certainly she owed something to
Verinder. The whole party were his guests at Goldbanks. He had brought
them in a private car and taken care of them munificently. There were
times when Moya disliked him a good deal, but that would not justify an
act of treachery. If she warned Jack Kilmeny--and Moya did not pretend
to herself for an instant that she was not going to do this--she would
have to make confession to Verinder later. This would be humiliating,
doubly so because she knew the man believed she was in love with the
Goldbanks miner.

In her heart the Irish girl did not doubt that Jack was guilty, but this
would not prevent her from saving him if she could. There came to her a
swift vision of two helpless girls in a cabin with drinking ruffians, of
the entry of a man into the picture, of his fight against odds to save
her and Joyce from insult. Beside this abstract justice became a pale
and misty virtue.

"Of course you'll not tell anyone," Joyce repeated.

Moya brought her gaze back from the window. "I shall tell Mr. Kilmeny."

"But it isn't your secret. You have no right to."

"Have you forgotten that night in the cabin?" asked Moya in a low, clear
voice. "If you have, I haven't."

"I don't care," Joyce answered petulantly. "He's so hard. Why can't he
be nice about this? Why can't he understand--instead of sneering at me?
It's a good deal harder for me than for him. Think of fifty years of
Dobyans Verinder."

"Would you care to write Mr. Kilmeny a note? I'll take it to him if you
like," Moya suggested gently.

Joyce considered. "No, I couldn't put it on paper. But--you might tell
him."

"I don't think I could quite do that."

"If it came up right; just show him how I'm placed."

"Perhaps. Shall I tell him that you asked me to warn him?"

Joyce nodded, eyes shining. She was a young woman capable of changing
her mind in the snap of a finger. Dainty and exquisite as apple
blossoms, she was like a young plant with delicate tendrils forever
reaching out. Love she must have and ever more of it. To admiration she
was sensitive in every fiber. Whenever she thought of Jack Kilmeny's
contempt tears scorched her eyes.

It was like Moya that she carried her warning immediately and directly.
Kilmeny was not easy to find. He had been seen entering the office of a
lawyer, but had left before she arrived. The attorney understood Jack to
say that he was going to an assayer's office, and the young woman
learned there that he had not been seen yet by the assayer. From here
she walked toward his boarding house, thinking that she might catch him
at lunch.

A quick step on the boardwalk behind her caught the girl's attention.
Almost at the same moment a voice hailed her.

"Whither away, Miss Dwight?"

She turned, heart beating fast. "I was looking for you, Mr. Kilmeny."

"And you've found me. What luck--for Jack Kilmeny!" His friendly
smile--the same one that had claimed comradeship on the Gunnison--beamed
upon her with its hint of irony.

A miner with a dinner bucket was coming toward them. Moya spoke quickly.

"I want to see you ... alone. I've something important to tell you."

His cool eyes searched her face alertly. "Come up with me to the old
Pandora dump."

They took a side street that ran up the hill, presently came to the end
of it, and stopped at the foot of a trail leading to the abandoned
shaft-house.

The girl fired her news at him point blank. "Mr. Verinder has found out
what you mean to do to-night and you are to be trapped."

"What I mean to do?" he repeated.

"About the ore--shipping it or something. I don't know exactly--somebody
was drinking and talked, I think."

Moya, watching Kilmeny's face, saw only the slightest change. The eyes
seemed to harden and narrow the least in the world.

"Tell me all you know about it."

She repeated what Joyce had overheard, adding that her friend had asked
her to tell him.

The faintest ironic smile touched his face. "Will you thank Miss Seldon
for me, both for this and many other favors?"

"You don't understand Joyce. You're not fair to her," Moya said
impulsively.

"Perhaps not." A sudden warmth kindled in his eyes. "But I know who my
real friends are. I'm fair to them, neighbor."

The color beat into her face, but she continued loyally. "May
I ... assume you have a kindly interest in Joyce?"

"I'll listen to anything you care to tell me. I owe my friend, Miss
Dwight, that much."

"She told me ... a little about you and her. Be fair to her. Remember
how she has been brought up. All her life it has been drilled into her
that she must make a good match. It's a shameful thing. I hate it.
But ... what can a girl like Joyce do?"

"You justify her?"

"I understand her. A decision was forced on her. She had no time to
choose. And--if you'll forgive my saying so--I think Joyce did wisely,
since she is what she is."

"Of course she did," he answered bitterly.

"Think of her. She doesn't love him, but she sacrifices her feeling to
what she considers her duty."

"Shall we substitute ambition for duty?"

"If you like. Her position is not a happy one, but she must smile and be
gay and hide her heartache. You can afford to be generous, Mr. Kilmeny."

"I've been a fool," he admitted dryly. "The turn that things have taken
is the best possible one for me. But I'm not quite prepared to thank
Miss Seldon yet for having awakened me."

She saw that his vanity was stung more than his heart. His infatuation
for her had been of the senses. The young woman shifted to another
issue.

"You'll be careful to-night, won't you?"

"Very. Mr. Verinder will have to wait for his coup, thanks to you."

"You mean...?" The question hung fire on her lips.

"Go on, neighbor."

"No. It was something I had no business to ask." The cheeks beneath the
dusky eyes held each a patch of color burning through the tan.

"Then I'll say it for you. You were going to ask if they would really
have caught me with the goods. Wasn't that it?"

She nodded, looking straight at him with the poise of lithe, slim youth
he knew so well. Her very breathing seemed for the moment suspended
while she waited, tremulous lips apart, for his answer.

"Yes."

"You mean that ... you are a highgrader?"

"Yes."

"I ... was afraid so."

His eyes would not release her. "You made excuses for Miss Seldon. Can
you find any for me?"

"You are a man. You are strong. It is different with you."

"My sin is beyond the pale, I suppose?"

"How do I know? I'm only a girl. I've never seen anything of real life.
Can I judge you?"

"But you do."

The troubled virginal sweetness of the girl went to his soul. She was
his friend, and her heart ached because of his wrongdoing.

"I can't make myself think wrong is right."

"You think the profits from these mines should all go to Verinder and
his friends, that none should belong to the men who do the work?"

"I don't know.... That doesn't seem fair.... But I'm not wise enough to
know how to make that right. The law is the law. I can't go back of
that."

"Can't you? I can. Who makes the laws?" He asked it almost harshly.

"The people, I suppose."

"Nothing of the kind. The operators control the legislatures and put
through whatever bills they please. I went to the legislative assembly
once and we forced through an eight hour law for underground workers.
The state Supreme Court, puppets of capital, declared the statute
unconstitutional. The whole machinery of government is owned by our
masters. What can we do?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I--except what I am doing. It is against the law, all right,
but I try to see that the workmen get some of the profits they earn."

"Would the operators--what would they do if they proved you guilty of
highgrading?"

"It is hard to prove. Ore can't easily be identified."

"But if they did?" she persisted.

"I'd go over the road quick as their courts could send me." A sardonic
flicker of amusement moved him to add: "Would you obey the Scriptural
injunction and visit me in prison, Miss Dwight?"

"I wouldn't be here. We're going back to England next week."

"But if you were. Would your friendship stand the test?"

Once again she answered, "I don't know," her heart beating wildly as her
glance fell away from his.

"I shan't have to try you out this time, neighbor. I'm not going to the
pen if I can help it."

"Are you sure of that? The mine owners are quite determined to punish
some of the highgraders. Suppose I hadn't come to you to-day. What
then?"

He smiled down upon her with the easy recklessness that distinguished
him. "I don't think it would have run quite to a prison sentence. The
burden of proof lies on the accuser. Because I am in possession of rich
ore, it does not follow that I did not come by it legitimately. Ore
can't be sworn to like bric-a-brac. I may have shipped this in from
South Africa, so far as the law knows. Bleyer knows that. I figure he
would have played his hand in the Goldbanks way."

"And how would that be?"

"He would forget the law too, just as we've done on our side. A posse
of men would have fallen on me maybe after I had got out of town, and
they would have taken that ore from me. They would have been masked so
that I could not swear to them."

"Why, that is highway robbery."

He laughed. "We don't use such big words out here, ma'am. Just a
hold-up--a perfectly legitimate one, from Bleyer's viewpoint--and it
would have left me broke."

"Broke!"

He nodded. "Dead broke. I've got twenty thousand dollars invested in
that ore--every cent I've got in the world."

"You paid that to the miners for it?"

"We pay fifty per cent. of what is coming to the men as soon as a rough
assay is made, the other fifty after we get the smelter returns. That
wagon load of ore is worth--unless I miss my guess badly--about sixty
thousand dollars."

"Dear me. So much as that?" She could not quite keep a note of sarcasm
out of her voice. "And have you it in a safety deposit vault?"

His cool gaze took her in quietly. He was willing to bet his last dollar
on her loyalty, and it was like him to back his judgment in one wild
throw. "Not exactly. It is lying in a pile of hay in my barn, all sacked
up ready for shipment."

"Waiting there for anybody that wants it," she suggested.

"For anybody that wants it worse than I do," he corrected, the fighting
gleam in his eyes.

"I've a right to ask one thing of you--that there will be no bloodshed
to-night because of what I have told you."

"There will be none of my seeking," he replied grimly.

"No. That's not enough. You must find a way to avoid it."

"By handing over my hard-earned dishonest profits to the virtuous
Verinder?" he asked dryly.

"I don't care how. But I won't have on my shoulders ... murder."

"That's a right hard word, neighbor," he said, falling again into the
Western drawl he sometimes used as a mark of his friendship for her.
"But have it your own way. I'll not even tote a gat."

"Thank you." She gave him a brisk little nod, suddenly choked up in her
throat, and turned to go.

Jack fell into step beside her. "Have I lost my little friend--the one
who used to come to me in my dreams and whisper with a lisp that I
wasn't a 'stwanger'?" he asked, very gently.

She swallowed twice and walked on without looking at him. But every
nerve of her was conscious of his stimulating presence. Since the inner
man found expression in that lithe body with the undulating flow of
well-packed muscles, in the spare head set so finely on the perfect
shoulders, in the steady eyes so frank and self-reliant, surely he was
not unworthy the friendship of any woman. But he had just confessed
himself a thief. What right had he to ask or she to give so much?

Her hand went out in an impetuous little gesture of despair. "How do I
know? You are doing wrong, but ... Oh, why do you do such things?"

"It's in my blood not to let prudence stop me when I've made up my mind
to a thing. My father was that way. I'm trying in a rough way to right
an injustice--and I like the excitement--and I daresay I like the loot
too," he finished with a reckless laugh.

"I wish I could show you how wrong you are," she cried in a low voice.

"You can't. I'll go my own way. But you are still going to let me come
and visit you in your dreams, aren't you?"

The glow in her quick live eyes was not a reflection of the sun. She
felt the color flood her cheeks in waves. She dared not look at him, but
she was poignantly aware that his gaze was fixed on her, that it seemed
to bore to the soul and read the hidden secret there. A queer
lightheadedness affected her. It was as if her body might float away
into space. She loved him. Whatever he was, the man held her heart in
the hollow of his careless, reckless hand. To him she would always deny
it--or would have if he had thought enough of her to ask--but she knew
the truth about herself from many a passionate hour of despair.

Dry as a whisper came her answer, in a voice which lacked the
nonchalance she tried to give it. "I daresay I'll be as friendly ... as
you deserve."

"You've got to be a heap more friendly than that, partner."

They had come back to the boardwalk which marked the parting of the ways
for them. She had won control of herself again and offered him a steady
hand.

"I suppose we'll not see each other again.... Good-by."

He was suddenly conscious that he desired very greatly her regard and
her approval.

"Is that all you have to say? Are you going to leave me like this?"

"What more is there to be said?" She asked it quietly, with the calm
courage that had its birth in hopelessness.

"This much, at least. I don't release you from ... the old tie that used
to bind us. We're still going to be dream friends. I haven't forgotten
little Moya, who kissed me one night on the deck of the _Victorian_."

"She was a baby at the time," answered the girl.

He had not released her hand. Now, as he looked straight into the sweet
face with eyes like troubled stars, it came to him on a flood of light
that he had made a fatal mistake.

He dropped her fingers abruptly. "Good-by."

His crisp footfalls seemed to print themselves on a heart of lead. How
could she know that he carried away with him a vision of sweet youth
that was to endure!

CHAPTER XVIII

TWO AMBUSHES

The clock at the new Verinder Building showed ten minutes past eleven as
Jack Kilmeny took the Utah Junction road out of Goldbanks with his
loaded ore wagon. It was a night of scudding clouds, through which
gleamed occasionally a fugitive moon. The mountain road was steep and
narrow, but both the driver and the mules were used to its every turn
and curve. In early days the highgrader had driven a stage along it many
a night when he could not have seen the ears of the bronchos.

His destination was the Jack Pot, a mine three miles from town, where
intermittently for months he had been raising worthless rock in the hope
of striking the extension of the Mollie Gibson vein. It was not quite
true, as Bleyer had intimated, that his lease was merely a blind to
cover ore thefts, though undoubtedly he used it for that purpose
incidentally.

Bleyer had guessed shrewdly that Kilmeny would drive out to the Jack
Pot, put up in the deserted bunk-house till morning, and then haul the
ore down to the junction to ship to the smelter on the presumption that
it had been taken from the leased property. This was exactly what Jack
had intended to do. Apparently his purpose was unchanged. He wound
steadily up the hill trail, keeping the animals at a steady pull, except
for breathing spells. The miner had been a mule skinner in his time,
just as he had tried his hand at a dozen other occupations. In the still
night the crack of his whip sounded clear as a shot when it hissed above
the flanks of the leaders without touching them.

He ran into the expected ambush a half mile from the mine, at a point
where the road dipped down a wooded slope to a sandy wash.

"Hands up!" ordered a sharp voice.

A horseman loomed up in the darkness beside the wagon. A second appeared
from the brush. Other figures emerged dimly from the void.

Jack gave his mules the whip and the heavy wagon plowed into the deep
sand. Before the wheels had made two revolutions the leaders were
stopped. Other men swarmed up the side of the wagon, dragged the driver
from his seat, and flung him to the ground.

Even though his face was buried in the sand and two men were spread over
his body, the captive was enjoying himself.

"This is no way to treat a man's anatomy--most unladylike conduct I ever
saw," he protested.

He was sharply advised to shut up.

After the pressure on his neck was a little relieved, Jack twisted round
enough to see that his captors were all masked.

"What is this game, boys--a hold-up?" he asked.

"Yes. A hold-up of a hold-up," answered one.

Three of the men busied themselves moving the ore sacks from his wagon
to another that had been driven out of the brush. A fourth, whom he
judged to be Bleyer, was directing operations, while the fifth menaced
him with a revolver shoved against the small of his back.

The situation would have been a serious one--if it had not happened to
be amusing instead. Kilmeny wanted to laugh at the bustling energy of
the men, but restrained himself out of respect for what was expected of
him.

"I'll have the law on you fellows," he threatened, living up to the
situation. "You'd look fine behind the bars, Bleyer."

"All those sacks transferred yet, Tim?" barked the superintendent.

"Yep."

"Good. Hit the trail."

The wagon passed out of the draw toward Goldbanks. For some minutes the
sound of the wheels grinding against the disintegrated granite of the
roadbed came back to Jack and the two guards who remained with him.

"Hope this will be a lesson to you," said the superintendent presently.
"Better take warning. Next time you'll go to the pen sure."

"Wait till I get you into court, Bleyer."

"What'll you do there?" jeered the other man. "You'd have a heluvatime
swearing to him and making it stick. You're sewed up tight this time,
Jack."

"Am I? Bet you a new hat that by this time to-morrow night you fellows
won't be cracking your lips laughing."

"Take you. Just order the hat left at Goldstein's for the man who calls
for it."

For an hour by the superintendent's watch Kilmeny was held under guard.
Then, after warning the highgrader not to return to town before
daybreak, the two men mounted and rode swiftly away. Jack was alone with
his mules and his empty wagon.

He restrained himself no longer. Mirth pealed in rich laughter from his
throat, doubled him up, shook him until he had to hang on to a wagon
wheel for support. At last he wiped tears from his eyes, climbed into
the wagon, and continued on the way to the Jack Pot. At intervals his
whoop of gayety rang out boyishly on the night breeze. Again he whistled
cheerfully. He was in the best of humor with himself and the world. For
he had played a pretty good joke on Bleyer and Verinder, one they would
appreciate at its full within a day or two. He would have given a good
deal to be present when they made a certain discovery. Would Moya smile
when Verinder told her how the tables had been turned? Or would she
think it merely another instance of his depravity?

The road wound up and down over scarred hillsides and through gorges
which cut into the range like sword clefts. From one of these it crept
up a stiff slope toward the Jack Pot. One hundred and fifty yards from
the mine Jack drew up to give the mules a rest.

His lips framed themselves to whistle the first bars of a popular song,
but the sound died stillborn. Sharply through the clear night air rang a
rifle shot.

Jack did not hear it. A bolt of jagged lightning seared through his
brain. The limp hands of the driver fell away from the reins and he fell
to the ground, crumpling as a dry leaf that is crushed in the palm.

From the shadow of the bunk-house two men stole into the moonlight
heavily like awkward beasts of prey. They crept stealthily forward,
rifles in hand, never once lifting their eyes from the huddled mass
beside the wagon.

The first looked stolidly down upon the white face and kicked the body
with his heavy boot.

"By Goad, Dave, us be quits wi' Jack Kilmeny."

The other--it was Peale, the Cornish miner--had stepped on a spoke of
the wheel and pulled himself up so that he could look down into the bed
of the wagon. Now he broke out with an oath.

"The wagon's empty."

"What!" Trefoyle straightened instantly, then ran to see for himself.
For a moment he could not speak for the rage that surged up in him. "The
dommed robber has made fool of us'n," he cried savagely.

In their fury they were like barbarians, cursing impotently the man
lying with a white face shining in the moonlight. They had expected to
pay a debt of vengeance and to win a fortune at the same stroke. The
latter they had missed. The disappointment of their loss stripped them
to stark primeval savagery. It was some time before they could exult in
their revenge.

"He'll interfere wi' us no more--not this side o' hell anyway," Peale
cried.

"Not he. An' we'll put him in a fine grave where he'll lie safe."

They threw the body into the wagon and climbed to the seat. Peale drove
along an unused road that deflected from the one running to the Jack
Pot.

CHAPTER XIX

MR. VERINDER IS TREATED TO A SURPRISE

The morning after the seizing of the ore Verinder came to breakfast in a
mood so jubilant that he could not long keep to himself the cause of his
exultation. Kilmeny and Farquhar were away on a hunting trip, and none
of the ladies except Moya was yet up. He was especially eager to tell
his news to her, because she had always been such an open defender of
the highgrader. She gave him his opening very promptly, for she was
anxious to know what had occurred.

"Has some distant connection passed away and left you a fortune, Mr.
Verinder? Or have you merely found a new gold mine since I saw you
last?" she asked.

"By Jove, you're a good guesser, Miss Dwight. I found a gold mine last
night. Wonder if you could think where."

Her heart beat faster. "You're so pleased about it I fancy the quartz
must have been sacked up for you ready for the smelter," she said
carelessly.

Verinder flashed a quick look at her. "Eh, what? How's that?"

Moya opened her lips to confess what she had done, but the arrival of a
waiter delayed this. Before he had left, Lady Farquhar entered and the
girl's chance was temporarily gone.

"I was just telling Miss Dwight that we've found another gold mine, Lady
Farquhar--and of all places in the world located in the bed of a wagon."

"In the bed of a wagon! How could that be?"

"Fact, 'pon my word! High-grade ore too, we fancy; but we'll know more
about that when we hear from the assayer."

The matron intercepted the look of triumph--it was almost a jeer--that
the mine owner flung toward Miss Dwight. She did not understand what he
was talking about, but she saw that Moya did.

"If you'd tell us just what happened we'd be able to congratulate you
more intelligently," the latter suggested, masking her anxiety.

"Jove, I wish I could--like to tell you the whole story. We pulled off a
ripping surprise on one of your friends. But--the deuce of it is I'm
sworn to secrecy. We played the highgraders' game and stepped a bit
outside the law for once. Let it go at this, that the fellow had to
swallow a big dose of his own medicine."

Moya pushed one more question home. "Nobody hurt, I suppose?"

"Only his feelings and his pocketbook. But I fancy one highgrader has
learned that Dobyans Verinder knows his way about a bit, you know."

The subject filled Moya's thoughts all day. Had Kilmeny after all failed
to take advantage of her warning? Or had his opponents proved too shrewd
for him? From what Verinder had told her she surmised that Jack had
tried to reach the railroad with his ore and been intercepted. But why
had he not changed his plans after her talk with him? Surely he was not
the kind of man to walk like a lamb into a trap baited for him.

Late in the afternoon Moya, dressed in riding costume, was waiting on
the hotel porch for India and her brother when she saw Verinder coming
down the street. That he was in a sulky ill humor was apparent.

"Lord Farquhar and Captain Kilmeny came back a couple of hours ago," she
said by way of engaging him in talk.

"Any luck?" he asked morosely and with obvious indifference.

"A deer apiece and a bear for the captain."

"That fellow Kilmeny outwitted us, after all," he broke out abruptly.
"We've been had, by Jove! Must have been what Bleyer calls a plant."

"I don't understand."

"The rock we took from him was refuse stuff--not worth a dollar."

The girl's eyes gleamed. "Your gold mine was salted, then."

"Not even salted. He had gathered the stuff from some old dump."

"He must have profited by my warning, after all," Moya said quietly.

The little man's eyes narrowed. "Eh? How's that? Did you say your
warning?"

In spite of herself she felt a sense of error at having played the
traitor to her host. "Sorry. I didn't like to do it, but----"

"What is it you did?" he asked bluntly.

"I told Mr. Kilmeny that his plan was discovered."

"You--told him." He subdued his anger for the moment. "If it isn't
asking too much--how did you know anything about it?"

She felt herself flushing with shame, but she answered lightly enough.
"You shouldn't discuss secrets so near the breakfast-room, Mr.
Verinder."

"I see. You listened ... and then you ran to your friend, the
highgrader, with the news. That was good of you, Miss Dwight. I
appreciate it--under the circumstances."

She knew he referred to the fact that she was his guest. To hear him put
into words his interpretation of the thing she had done, with
implications of voice and manner that were hateful, moved her to a
disgust that included both him and herself.

"Thank you, Mr. Verinder--for all the kind things you mean and can't
say."

She turned on her heel and walked to the end of the veranda. After a
moment's thought he followed her.

"Have I said a word too much, Miss Dwight? You did listen to a private
conversation you weren't meant to hear, didn't you? And you ran to your
friend with it? If I'm wrong, please correct me."

"I daresay you're right. We'll let it go at that, if you please."

Verinder was irritated. Clearly in the right, he had allowed her to put
him in the wrong.

"I'll withdraw listened, Miss Dwight. Shall we substitute overheard?"

Her angry eyes flashed into his cold, hard ones. "What would you expect
me to do? You know what he did for Joyce and me. And he is Captain
Kilmeny's cousin. Could I let him go to prison without giving even a
warning?"

"Evidently not. So you sacrifice me for him."

"You think I wasn't justified?"

"You'll have to settle that with your conscience," he said coldly.
"Don't think _I_ would have been justified in your place."

"You would have let him go to prison--the man who had fought for you
against odds?"

"Does that alter the fact that he is a thief?" Verinder demanded
angrily.

"It alters my relation to the fact--and it ought to alter yours. He did
a great service to the woman you are engaged to marry. Does that mean
nothing to you?"

"The fellow was playing off his own bat, wasn't he? I don't see I owe
him anything," the mine owner sulkily answered. "Truth is, I'm about fed
up with him. He's a bad lot. That's the long and short of him. I don't
deny he's a well-plucked daredevil. What of it? This town is full of
them. There was no question of his going to prison. I intended only to
get back some of the ore he and his friends have stolen from me."

"I didn't know that."

"Would it have made any difference if you had?"

She considered. "I'm not sure."

Captain Kilmeny and India emerged from the hotel and bore down upon
them.

"All ready, Moya," cried India.

"Ready here." Moya knew that it must be plain to both Captain Kilmeny
and his sister that they had interrupted a disagreement of some sort.
Characteristically, she took the bull by the horns. "Mr. Verinder and I
are through quarreling. At least I'm through. Are you?" she asked the
mine owner with a laugh.

"Didn't know I'd been quarreling, Miss Dwight," Verinder replied
stiffly.

"You haven't. I've been doing it all." She turned lightly to her
betrothed. "They didn't send up the pinto, Ned. Hope he hasn't really
gone lame."

Verinder had been put out of the picture. He turned and walked into the
lobby of the hotel, suddenly resolved to make a complaint to Lady
Farquhar about the way Moya Dwight had interfered with his plans. He
would show that young lady whether she could treat him so outrageously
without getting the wigging she deserved.

Lady Farquhar listened with a contempt she was careful to veil. It was
not according to the code that a man should run with the tale of his
injuries to a young woman's chaperon. Yet she sympathized with him even
while she defended Moya. No doubt if Captain Kilmeny had been at hand
his fiancée would have taken the matter to him for decision. In his
absence she had probably felt that it was incumbent on her to save his
cousin from trouble.

The mine owner received Lady Farquhar's explanations in skeptical
silence. In his opinion, Moya's interest in Jack Kilmeny had nothing to
do with the relationship between that scamp and the captain. He would
have liked to say so flatly, but he felt it safer to let his manner
convey the innuendo. In her heart Lady Farquhar was of the same belief.
She resolved to have a serious talk with Moya before night.

CHAPTER XX

COLTER TAKES A HAND

Moya combed her long rippling hair while Lady Farquhar laid down the law
that hedges a young woman from the satisfaction of her generous
impulses. For the most part the girl listened in silence, a flush
burning through each of her dusky cheeks. There was nothing to be said
that would avail. She might defend the thing she had done, but not the
feelings that had inspired her action.

"It is all very well to be independent within limits, my dear, but young
women of our class are subject to the penalties that go with our
privileges. When I was a girl I rebelled but had to obey. So must you."
Lady Farquhar interrupted herself to admire the vivid rebel she was
admonishing. "What wonderful hair you have--so long and thick and wavy.
It must take a great deal of care."

"Yes," Moya admitted absently.

She did not resent the rebuke Lady Jim had come to give her while she
was undressing. No doubt she deserved it. She had been unmaidenly, and
all for love of this light-hearted vagabond who did not care the turn
of a hand for her. All day her thoughts had been in chaotic ferment. At
times she lashed herself with the whip of her own scorn because she
cared for a self-confessed thief, for a man who lived outside the law
and was not ashamed of it. Again it was the knowledge of her unwanted
love that flayed her, or of the injustice to her betrothed in so
passionate a feeling for another man. With all her strong young will she
fought against this devouring flame that possessed her--and she knew
that she fought in vain.

In the shipwreck of her self-respect she clung to one spar. Soon they
would be on their way back to that well-ordered world where she would be
entirely in the groove of convention. Her engagement to Captain Kilmeny
would be announced. Surely among the many distractions of London she
would forget this debonair scamp who had bewitched her.

"You should have come to me--or to India for that matter. She is his
cousin and is in a different position from you. Don't you see that, my
dear?" Lady Farquhar asked gently.

And again Moya said "Yes" wearily.

"James and I understand you--how impulsive you are--and how generous.
But Mr. Kilmeny--and Mr. Verinder--what do you suppose they think?"

"I don't care what Mr. Verinder thinks." And Moya began to coil her
hair loosely for the night.

"But that's just it--a girl _must_ care. She can't afford to allow
anyone an opportunity to think unpleasant things about her. She has to
guard her reputation very jealously."

"And I suppose I've been playing ducks and drakes with mine," Moya said,
pushing home a hairpin.

"I don't say that, dear. What I say is that Mr. Kilmeny may
misunderstand your interest in him."

"He may think I'm in love with him. Is that it?" flashed the girl.

"He might. Give a man's vanity the least chance and----"

A reckless impulse to hurt herself--the same which leads a man to grind
on an aching tooth in heady rage--swept Moya like a flame.

"Then he would think the truth," she interrupted. "What's the use of
denying it? I ... I'm in love with him."

"Moya." Lady Farquhar's protest came in a horrified gasp.

The young woman turned her slim body in the chair with supple grace so
as to face her chaperon. Beneath the dark eyes spots of color burned
through the tan.

"It's true. I've cared ... ever since we met him."

"And he--has he ever made love to you?"

"Never. He's thought only of Joyce. That's what makes it more
shameless."

Lady Farquhar took a moment to absorb the unwelcome news. "I never
dreamed it was as bad as this. Of course I knew he interested you a good
deal, but----"

Moya could not keep scorn of herself out of her voice. "But you didn't
think I was so lost to decency as to throw myself at his head. You see I
am."

"Nonsense," cut in her chaperon with sharp common sense. "You're not the
first girl that has fancied a man who won't do. It's imagination--a good
deal of it. Make yourself forget him. That's all you can do."

"I can't do that. I've tried," confessed Moya miserably.

"Then try again--and again--and still again. Remember that you are
engaged to a man worth a dozen of him. Call your pride to help you."

"It seems that I have none. I've told myself forty times that he's a
highgrader and that doesn't help."

Her friend was alarmed. "You don't mean that you would marry a man who
is a--a man who steals ore."

"No. I wouldn't marry him ... even if he wanted me--which he doesn't. I
haven't fallen that far."

"Glad to hear you say that," answered Lady Farquhar with a sigh of
relief. She took the girl in her arms and patted one of the shoulders
over which the hair cascaded. "My dear, it's hard. You're intense and
emotional. But you've got to--to buck up, as James says. You're
brave--and you're strong-willed. Make a winning fight."

"What about ... Ned?"

"Does he suspect?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I think he does. But you know how generous he
is. He never says anything, or avoids the subject of his cousin in any
way." She added, after an instant: "Ned knows that I don't ... love
him--that is, in one way. He says he is ready to wait till that comes."

"Ned Kilmeny is a man out of a million."

Moya nodded. "Yes. That's why this is so unfair to him. What ought I to
do? Shall I break the engagement? That's what I want to do, but it will
hurt him a good deal."

"Wait. Give yourself and him a chance. In a few days we'll be started
home."

"That's what I've been telling myself. Everything here reminds me
of--_him_. It will be different then, I try to think. But--down in my
heart I don't think it will."

"And I know it will," the matron told her promptly. "Time, my dear,
heals all our woes. Youth has great recuperative power. In a year you
will wonder how he ever cast such a spell over you."

Moya heard the last belated reveler pass down the corridor to his room
before she fell asleep. When she awoke it was to see a long shaft of
early sunshine across the bed.

She rose, took her bath, and dressed for walking. Her desire drew the
steps of the young woman away from the busy street toward the suburb.
She walked, as always, with the elastic resilience of unfettered youth.
But the weight that had been at her heart for two days--since she had
learned from Jack Kilmeny's lips that he was a highgrader--was still
tied there too securely to be shaken away by the wonder of the glorious
newborn day.

Returning to the hotel, she met a man on the porch whose face stirred
instantly a fugitive memory. He came to her at once, a big
leather-skinned man with the weatherbeaten look of the West.

"Aren't you the Miss Dwight I've heard Jack Kilmeny mention?"

"Yes. This is Mr. Colter, isn't it?"

He nodded, watching her with hard narrowed eyes. "Something's wrong. Can
you tell me what it is? Jack's mules--two of them, anyhow--came back to
the barn during the night with bits of broken harness still attached to
them. Looks like there had been a runaway and the wagon had come to
grief. The keeper of the livery stable says Bell took the wagon around
to Jack's place and left it with him. He was seen driving out of town
soon after. He has not been seen since."

Her heart flew to alarm. "You mean ... you think he has been hurt?"

"Don't know. He's not in town. That's a cinch. I've raked Goldbanks with
a toothcomb. Where is he?"

"Couldn't he be at his mine?"

"I sent a boy out there. He's not at the Jack Pot."

"What is it that you think? Tell me," she cried softly.

"You're his friend, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"There's some talk around town that he was held up by Bleyer. I came up
here to see him or Verinder. Foul play of some kind, that's my guess."

"But--you surely don't think that Mr. Bleyer or Mr. Verinder would ...
hurt him."

The look of dogged resolution on the man's granite face did not soften.
"They'll have to show me--and by God! if they did----"

Her mind flew with consternation to the attack upon Kilmeny that had
been made by Bleyer. But Verinder had told her nobody had been hurt.
Could they have taken the highgrader prisoner? Were they holding him for
some purpose?

"Mr. Verinder gets up about this time usually," she said.

"I'm waiting for him. He said he would be down at once."

"Will you tell me anything you find out, please? I'll be on the veranda
upstairs."

Colter joined her a quarter of an hour later. "I saw both Bleyer and
Verinder. They've got something up their sleeve, but I don't think they
know where Jack is or what has become of him. They pretended to think I
was trying to put one over on them."

"What will you do now?"

"I'll go out to the Jack Pot myself. I've reason to believe he intended
to go there."

"If you find out anything----"

"Yes, I'll let you know."

Moya went directly from Colter to Bleyer. The superintendent entered a
curt denial to her implied charge.

"Miss Dwight, I don't know what you do or do not know. I see someone has
been blabbing. But I'll just say this. When I last saw Jack Kilmeny he
was as sound as I am this minute. I haven't the least idea where he is.
You don't need to worry about him at all. When he wants to turn up he'll
be on deck right side up. Don't ask me what his play is, for I don't
know. It may be to get me and Verinder in bad with the miners. Just be
sure of one thing: he's grandstanding."

She was amazingly relieved. "I'm so glad. I thought perhaps----"

"----that Mr. Verinder and I had murdered him. Thanks for your good
opinion of us, but really we didn't," he retorted in his dryest manner.

She laughed. "I did think perhaps you knew where he was."

"Well, I don't--and I don't want to," he snapped. "The less I see of him
the better I'll be satisfied."

The superintendent of the Verinder properties had found a note addressed
to him in one of the sacks of quartz taken from Kilmeny. The message,
genial to the point of impudence, had hoped he had enjoyed his little
experience as a hold-up. To Bleyer, always a serious-minded man, this
levity had added insult to injury. Just now the very mention of the
highgrader's name was a red rag to his temper. It was bad enough to be
bested without being jeered at by the man who had set a trap for him.

It was well on toward evening before Colter paid his promised visit to
Miss Dwight. She found him waiting for her upon her return from a ride
with Captain Kilmeny, Verinder, and Joyce.

Moya, as soon as she had dismounted, walked straight to him.

"What have you found out, Mr. Colter?"

"Not much. It rained during the night and wiped out the tracks of wagon
wheels. Don't know how far Jack got or where he went, but the remains of
the wagon are lying at the bottom of a gulch about two miles from the
Jack Pot."

"How did it get there?"

"I wish you could tell me that. Couldn't have been a runaway or the
mules would have gone over the edge of the road too." He stepped forward
quickly as Verinder was about to pass into the hotel. "I want to have a
talk with you."

The little man adjusted his monocle. "Ye-es. What about, my man?"

"About Jack Kilmeny. Where is he? What do you know? I'm going to find
out if I have to tear it from your throat."

Verinder was no coward, but he was a product of our modern
super-civilization. He glanced around hastily. The captain had followed
Joyce into the lobby. Moya and he were alone on the piazza, with this
big savage who looked quite capable of carrying out his threat.

"Don't talk demned nonsense," the mine owner retorted, flushing angrily.

Colter did not answer in words. The strong muscular fingers of his left
hand closed on the right arm of Verinder just below the shoulder with a
pressure excruciatingly painful. Dobyans found himself moving
automatically toward the end of the porch. He had to clench his teeth
to keep from crying out.

"Let me alone, you brute," he gasped.

Colter paid no attention until his victim was backed against the rail in
a corner. Then he released the millionaire he was manhandling.

"You're going to tell me everything you know. Get that into your head.
Or, by God, I'll wring your neck for you."

The Englishman had never before been confronted with such a situation.
He was a citizen of a country where wealth hedges a man from such
assaults. The color ebbed from his face, then came back with a rush.

"Go to the devil, you big bully," he flung out sharply.

Moya, taken by surprise at Colter's abrupt desertion of her, had watched
with amazement the subsequent flare-up. Now she crossed the porch toward
them.

"What are you doing, Mr. Colter?"

"None of your funeral, ma'am," the miner answered bluntly, not for a
moment lifting his hard eyes from Verinder. "Better unload what you
know. I've had a talk with Quint Saladay. I know all he knows, that
Bleyer and you and him with two other lads held up Jack and took his ore
away. The three of them left you and Bleyer guarding Jack. What did you
do with him?"

"It's a bally lie. I didn't stay with Bleyer to guard him."

"That's right. You didn't. You came back with the others. But you know
what Bleyer did. Out with it."

"I don't admit a word of what you say," said Verinder doggedly.

Colter had trapped him into a half admission, but he did not intend to
say any more.

Moya spoke, a little timidly. "Wait a minute please, Mr. Colter. Let me
talk with Mr. Verinder alone. I think he'll tell me what you want to
know."

Jack's friend looked at her with sharp suspicion. Was she trying to make
a dupe of him? Her candid glance denied it.

"All right. Talk to him all you like, but you'll do your talking here,"
he agreed curtly before he turned on his heel and walked away a few
steps.

"You must tell him what he wants to know, Mr. Verinder," urged the young
woman in a low voice. "Something has happened to his friend. We must
help clear it up."

"I'm not responsible for what has happened to his friend. What do you
want me to do? Peach on Bleyer, is that it?"

"No. Send for him and tell Mr. Colter the truth."

"I'll see him hanged and quartered first," he replied angrily.

"If you don't, I'll tell what I know. There's a life at stake," Moya
cried, a trace of agitation in her voice.

"Fiddlesticks!" he shrugged. "The fellow's full of tricks. He worked one
on us the other night. I'm hanged if I let him play me again."

"You must. I'll tell Captain Kilmeny and Lord Farquhar. I'll not let it
rest this way. The matter is serious."

"I'm not going to be bullied into saying a word. That's the long and
short of it," he repeated in disgust. "Let Bleyer tell the fellow if he
wants to. I'll have nothing to do with it. We're not responsible for
what has happened--if anything has."

"Then I'll go and get Mr. Bleyer."

"Just as you please. I'd see this ruffian at Halifax first, if you ask
_me_." The angry color flushed his face again as he thought of the
insult to which he had been subjected.

To Colter Moya explained her purpose. He nodded agreement without words.

After two or three attempts she got the superintendent on the telephone
at the Mollie Gibson mine and arranged with him that he was to come to
the hotel at once. A few minutes later he drove up in his car.

Moya put the case to him.

Bleyer turned to his employer. "You want me to tell Colter what I know?"

"I don't care a turn of my hand whether you tell the fellow or not,"
drawled Verinder, ignoring the presence of Colter.

The superintendent peered at Moya in his nearsighted fashion over the
glasses on his nose. "Can't see that it matters much, Miss Dwight. I'm
not worrying a bit about Jack Kilmeny, but, if Colter and you are, I'm
willing to tell what I know on condition that you keep the facts to
yourselves."

"I'll keep quiet if you haven't injured Jack in any way," Colter
amended.

"We haven't. He was sound as a new dollar when I left him Tuesday night.
Want to hear the particulars?"

"That's what I'm here for," snapped Colter.

Bleyer told the whole story so far as he knew it.

CHAPTER XXI

SPIRIT RAPPING?

Farquhar and Captain Kilmeny left next day for another short hunting
trip. The captain had offered to give it up, but Moya had urged upon him
that it would not be fair to disappoint his companion. He had gone
reluctantly, because he saw that his fiancée was worried. His own
opinion was that his cousin Jack had disappeared for reasons of his own.

Colter did not relax in his search. But as the days passed hope almost
died within him. Jack had plenty of enemies, as an aggressive fighter in
a new country always must have. His friend's fear was that some of them
had decoyed Kilmeny to his death. The suspicions of the miner centered
upon Peale and Trefoyle, both because Jack had so recently had trouble
with them and because they knew beforehand of his intention to remove
the ore. But he could find no evidence upon which to base his feeling,
though he and Curly, in company with a deputy sheriff, had put the
Cornishmen through a grilling examination.

It had been understood that the young women should take a trip through
the Never Quit before they left Goldbanks, but for one reason or another
this had been postponed until after the captain and Farquhar had started
on their final hunting expedition. The second afternoon after their
departure was the one decided upon for the little adventure.

Verinder, with the extravagance that went hand in hand with an
occasional astonishing parsimony, had ordered oilskin suits and
waterproof boots made especially for his guests. A room was reserved for
the young ladies at the mine, equipped for this one occasion to serve as
a boudoir where they might dress in comfort.

The mine owner's guests donned, with a good deal of hilarious merriment,
the short skirts, the boots, and the rubber helmets. The costumes could
not have been called becoming, but they were eminently suited for the
wet damp tunnels of the Never Quit.

After they had entered the cage it was a little terrifying to be shot so
rapidly down into the blackness of the mine.

"Don't be afraid. It's quite safe," Bleyer told them cheerfully.

At the tenth level the elevator stopped and they emerged into an open
space.

"We're going to follow this drift," explained the superintendent.

They seated themselves in ore cars and were wheeled into a cavern
lighted at intervals by electric bulbs. Presently the cars slowed down
and the occupants descended.

"This way," ordered Bleyer.

They followed in single file into a hot, damp tunnel, which dripped
moisture in big drops from the roof upon a rough, uneven floor of stone
and dirt where pools of water had occasionally gathered. The darkness
increased as they moved forward, driven back by the candles of the men
for a space scarce farther than they could reach with outstretched
hands.

Moya, bringing up the rear, could hear Bleyer explain the workings to
those at his heel. He talked of stopes, drifts, tunnels, wage scales,
shifts, high-grade ore, and other subjects that were as Greek to Joyce
and India. The atmosphere was oppressively close and warm, and the
oilskins that Moya wore seemed to weigh heavily upon her. She became
aware with some annoyance at herself that a faintness was stealing over
her brain and a mistiness over her eyes. To steady herself she stopped,
catching at the rough wall for support. The others, unaware that she was
not following, moved on. With a half articulate little cry she sank to
the ground.

When she came to herself the lights had disappeared. She was alone in
the most profound darkness she had ever known. It seemed to press upon
her so ponderably as almost to be tangible. The girl was frightened. Her
imagination began to conjure all sorts of dangers. Of cave-ins and
explosions she had heard and read a good deal. Anything was possible in
this thousand-foot deep grave. In a frightened, ineffective little voice
she cried out to her friends.

Instantly there came an answer--a faint tapping on the wall almost at
her ear. She listened breathlessly, and caught again that faint far
tap--tap--tap--tap--tap--tap--tap. Instinctively her hand went out,
groping along the wall until it fell upon a pipe. Even as she touched
this the sound came again, and along with it the faintest of vibrations.
She knew that somebody at a distance was hitting the pipe with a piece
of quartz or metal.

Stooping, she found a bit of broken rock. Three times she tapped the
pipe. An answer came at once.

Tap--tap--tap--tap--tap--tap--tap!

She tried two knocks. Again the response of seven taps sounded. Four
blows brought still seven. Why always seven? She did not know, but she
was greatly comforted to know that her friends were in communication
with her. After all she was not alone.

A light glimmered at the end of the tunnel and moved slowly toward her.
Bleyer's voice called her name. Presently the whole party was about her
with sympathetic questions and explanations.

She made light of her fainting attack, but Verinder insisted on getting
her back to the upper air in spite of her protests. He had discovered
that Joyce was quite ready to return to the sunlight, now that her
curiosity was satisfied. A very little of anything that was unpleasant
went a long way with Miss Seldon, and there was something about this
underground tomb that reminded her strongly of an immense grave.

At dinner Verinder referred to the attack of vertigo. "Feel quite fit
again, Miss Dwight?"

"Quite, thank you." Moya was a little irritated at the reference,
because she was ashamed of having given way to physical weakness. "It
was nothing. I was a goose. That's all."

Bleyer, a guest for the evening, defended the young woman from her own
scorn. "It often takes people that way the first time, what with the
heat and the closeness. I once knew a champion pugilist to keel over
while he was going through a mine."

"Were you afraid when you found yourself alone?" Joyce asked.

"I was until you tapped."

India looked puzzled. "Tapped. What do you mean?"

"On the pipe."

"What pipe?"

"The one that ran through the tunnel."

Miss Kilmeny shook her head. "I didn't see anybody tap. Perhaps one of
us touched it by chance."

"No. That couldn't be. The tap came seven times together, and after I
had answered it seven times more."

"Seven times?" asked Bleyer quickly.

"Yes--seven. But, if you didn't tap, who did?"

"Sure it wasn't imagination?" Verinder suggested.

"Imagination! I tell you it was repeated again and again," Moya said
impatiently.

"Spirit rapping," surmised Joyce lightly. "It doesn't matter, anyhow,
since it served its work of comforting Moya."

"It might have been some of the workmen," Lady Farquhar guessed.

"Must have been," agreed Bleyer. "And yet--we're not working that end of
the mine now. The men had no business there. Odd that it was seven raps.
That is a call for help. It means danger."

A bell of warning began to toll in Moya's heart. It rang as yet no clear
message to her brain, but the premonition of something sinister and
deadly sent a sinking sensation through her.

Verinder sat up with renewed interest. "I say, you know--spirit rapping.
Weren't you telling me, Bleyer, that there was a big accident there some
years ago? Perhaps the ghosts of some of the lost miners were sending a
message to their wives. Eh, what?"

"The accident was in the Golden Nugget, an adjoining mine. The property
was pretty well worked out and has never been opened since the
disaster."

The color had ebbed from Moya's lips. She was a sane young woman not
given to nerves. But she had worried a great deal over the disappearance
of Jack Kilmeny. This, coming on top of it, shook her composure. For she
was fighting with the dread that the spirit of the man she loved had
been trying to talk with her.

Joyce chattered gayly. "How weird! Moya, you must write an account of
your experience for the Society for Psychical Research. Put me in it,
please."

"Of course, it must have been some of the men, but I don't see----"

Moya interrupted the superintendent sharply. An intuition, like a flash
of light, had illumined her brain. "Where does that pipe run, Mr.
Bleyer?"

"Don't know. Maps of the workings at the office would show."

"Will you please find out?"

"Glad to look it up for you, Miss Dwight. I'm a little curious myself."

"I mean now--at once."

He glanced at her in quick surprise. Was she asking him to leave the
dinner table to do it? Lady Farquhar saw how colorless Moya was and came
to the rescue.

"My dear, you are a little unstrung, aren't you?" she said gently. "I
think we might find something more cheerful to talk about. We always
have the weather."

Moya rose, trembling. "No. I know now who called for help. It was Jack
Kilmeny."

Verinder was the first to break the strained silence. "But that's
nonsense, you know."

"It's the truth. He was calling for help."

"Where from? What would he be doing down in a mine?"

"I don't know.... Yes, I do, too," Moya corrected herself, voice
breaking under the stress of her emotion. "He has been put down there to
die."

"To die." Joyce echoed the words in a frightened whisper.

Dobyans laughed. "This is absurd. Who under heaven would put him there?"

A second flash of light burned in upon the girl. "That man, Peale--and
the other ruffian. They knew about the shipment just as you did. They
waylaid him ... and buried him in some old mine." Moya faced them
tensely, a slim wraith of a girl with dark eyes that blazed. She had
forgotten all about conventions, all about what they would think of her.
The one thing she saw was Jack Kilmeny in peril, calling for help.

But Lady Farquhar remembered what Moya did not. It was her duty to
defend her charge against the errant impulses of the heart, to screen
them from the callous eyes of an unsympathetic world.

"You jump to conclusions, my dear. Sit down and we'll talk it over."

"No. He called for help. I'm going to take it to him."

Again Verinder laughed unpleasantly. Moya did not at that moment know
the man was in existence. One sure purpose flooded her whole being. She
was going to save her lover.

India wavered. She, too, had lost color. "But--you're only guessing,
dear."

"You'll find it's true. We must follow that pipe and rescue him.
To-night."

"Didn't know you were subject to nerve attacks, Miss Dwight," derided
Verinder uneasily.

Moya put her hands in front of her eyes as if to shut out the picture of
what she saw. "He's been there for five days ... starving, maybe." She
shuddered.

"You're only guessing, Miss Dwight. What facts have you to back it?"
Bleyer asked.

"We must start at once--this very hour." Moya had recovered herself and
spoke with quiet decision. "But first we must find where the pipe
leads."

Bleyer answered the appeal in Lady Farquhar's eyes by rising. He
believed it to be a piece of hysterical folly, just as she did. But some
instinct of chivalry in him responded to the call made upon him. He was
going, not to save Kilmeny from an imaginary death, but to protect the
girl that loved him from showing all the world where her heart was.

"I'll be back inside of an hour--just as soon as I can trace that pipe
for you, Miss Dwight," he said.

"After all, Moya may be right," India added, to back her friend.

"It's just possible," Bleyer conceded.

CHAPTER XXII

THE ACID TEST

Jack Kilmeny opened his eyes to find himself in darkness utter and
complete except for a pinpoint of light gleaming from far above. His
head was whirling and throbbing painfully. Something warm and moist
dropped into his eyes, and when he put his hand up to investigate the
cause he knew it must be blood from a wound.

Faintly the sound of voices and of harsh laughter drifted down to him.
Presently this died away. The stillness was almost uncanny.

"Something laid me out, I reckon. Must have been a bad whack." His
finger found a ridge above the temple which had been plowed through the
thick curly hair. "Looks as though a glancing bullet hit me. Golden luck
it didn't finish the job."

He moved. A sharp pain shot through his lower right leg. Trying to rise,
he slipped down at once from a badly sprained ankle. Every muscle in his
body ached, as if he had been jarred by a hard fall.

"Better have a look around first," he told himself.

Groping in his pocket, he found a match case and struck a light. What he
saw made him shudder. From the ledge upon which he lay fell away a gulf,
the bottom of which could be only guessed. His eyes, becoming accustomed
to the darkness, made out that he was in some sort of shaft, thirty feet
or more below the surface. Rotten from age, the timberings had slipped
and become jammed. Upon some of these he was resting. The sprained
ankle, by preventing him from moving, had saved him from plunging down
the well.

He held out a silver dollar and dropped it. From the time the coin took
to strike Jack judged he was a hundred feet from the bottom.

The flare of a second match showed him a wall ladder leading down, but
unfortunately it did not extend above him except in rotting fragments.
What had happened he could guess. Supposing him to be dead, his enemies
had dropped the body down this deserted shaft. Not for a moment did he
doubt who they were. The voices had been unmistakably Cornish, and even
without that evidence he would have guessed Peale and his partner as the
guilty ones.

Since he could not go up he went down, moving warily so as not to jar
loose the timbers upon which he lay. Every rung of the ladder he tested
with great care before he put his weight upon it. Each step of the
journey down sent a throb of pain from the ricked ankle, even though he
rested his weight on his hands while he lowered himself. From the last
rung--it was by actual count the one hundred forty-third--he stepped to
the ground.

Another match showed him a drift running from the foot of the shaft.
Along this he dragged himself slowly, uncertain of direction but
determined to find out what possibility of escape his prison offered.
For two hundred yards the tunnel led forward and brought him up sharply
at an _impasse_. A cave-in blocked farther advance.

"Check," Jack told himself aloud grimly.

He knew now that his situation was a very serious one, for he had been
flung alive into a grave that offered only a slight prospect of escape.
He was without food, effectually cut off from the surface of the earth,
and none but those who had assaulted him knew that he was buried.

The alternatives that lay before him were plain. He might climb the
ladder again to the timber ledge and keep calling for help, or he might
attempt to dig a way over the cave-in with his hands and his
pocketknife, trusting that the tunnel led to another shaft. The former
was a chance pure and simple, and a slender one at that. It was not
likely that anybody would pass the mouth of a deserted shaft far up in
the hills at this season of the year. But it was quite within the
probabilities that the tunnel led to some of the workings of a live
property. Many miles of underground drifts were connected by
intercepting stopes of adjoining mines. If he could force a way through
the cave-in there might be safety beyond. To go moling into such a place
without timbering would be a dangerous business, but the crisis was one
that justified any risk.

He took stock of his assets. Fortunately he had bought at a lunch
counter a ham sandwich to stay his appetite during the night trip. This
was still in his pocket, badly mashed but still edible. Five cigars were
in the case he carried and upon his person all told he found eleven
matches. A little trickle of water ran through the tunnel and gave
assurance that he would not die of thirst. His pocketknife was a
serviceable one and he had plenty of physical strength.

Jack decided that he would eat half of the sandwich that day and reserve
the rest for the second one. His cigars were precious luxuries to be
indulged in once every twenty-four hours after he had knocked off work.

He attacked the cave-in with the cool energy that characterized him. Out
of a piece of board he fashioned a kind of shovel with his knife. Bits
of broken timbering lay at the foot of the shaft. These he dragged into
the tunnel for fuel to feed a small fire which he built to give light
for the work. All through the night and till noon the following day he
dug among the fallen rocks and dirt, cleaning this _débris_ away after
he had loosened it with his bare hands.

The impact of the fall when he had been thrown down the shaft had jarred
him greatly. With the slightest movement of the body his back and
shoulders ached, sending shoots of pain in protest to his brain. The
sprained ankle he had bound tightly in a wet handkerchief, but every
time his weight rested on that leg he had to grit his teeth. But it was
not in him to quit. He stuck to his job till he had done the shift set
himself.

At noon he crawled back to the foot of the shaft. He was fagged to
exhaustion. For half an hour he lay stretched on his back with every
muscle relaxed.

Presently he cut from his coat the pocket that contained the sandwich
and divided the mash of ham and bread into two parts. One of these he
ate. The other he returned to the coat.

Favoring his ricked ankle as best he could, Jack climbed the wall ladder
to the ledge upon which he had found himself lying the previous night.
Five minutes' examination of the walls showed him that there was no
chance to reach the top of the shaft unaided. He tested the jammed
timbers to make sure they were secure before he put his weight upon
them. During the next six hours he called aloud every few minutes to
attract the attention of anyone who might chance to be passing near.

Toward evening he treated himself to his first cigar, making the most
of the comfort that it gave him. When the stub grew short he held it on
the small blade of his knife so as not to miss a puff. What was left he
wrapped in a pocket handkerchief for later use.

As the stars began to come out in the little patch of blue sky he could
see just above his prison Jack lowered himself again to the foot of the
shaft. Here he lay down a second time and within five minutes had fallen
into a deep sleep.

About midnight he awakened and was aware at once of a ravenous hunger.
He was still resolute to win a way out, though the knowledge pressed on
him that his chances were slender at the best. Till morning he worked
without a moment's rest. The fever in his ankle and the pain of the
sprain had increased, but he could not afford to pay any attention to
them. Blood from his scarred, torn hands ran down his wrists. Every
muscle in his abused body ached. Still he stabbed with his knife into
the earth that filled the tunnel and still he pulled great rocks back
with his shovel. All his life he had fought for his own hand. He would
not let himself believe fate had played so scurvy a trick as to lock him
alive into a tomb closed so tightly that he could not pry a way out.

When his watch told him it was eight o'clock he staggered to the shaft
again and lay down on his back to rest. Before climbing to the platform
above he finished the sandwich. He was very hungry and could have eaten
enough for two men had he been given the opportunity. Again for hours he
called every few minutes at the top of his voice.

In his vest pocket were a pencil and a notebook used for keeping the
accounts of the highgraders with whom he did business. To pass the time
he set down the story of the crime which had brought him here and his
efforts to free himself.

After darkness fell he let himself down to the foot of the shaft and
slept. Either from hunger or from fever in his ankle he slept brokenly.
He was conscious of a little delirium in his waking spells, but the
coming of midnight found him master of himself, though a trifle
lightheaded.

It was impossible to work as steadily as he had done during the two
previous nights. Hunger and pain and toil were doing their best to wear
out his strength. His limbs moved laggardly. Once he fell asleep in the
midst of his labor. He dreamed of Moya, and after he awakened--as he
presently did with a start--she seemed so near that it would scarce have
surprised him if in the darkness his hands had come in contact with the
soft flesh of her vivid face. Nor did it strike him as at all odd that
it was Moya and not Joyce who was visiting him when he was in prison.
Sometimes she came to him as the little girl of the _Victorian_, but
more often the face he saw was the mocking one of the young woman, in
which gayety overran the tender sadness of the big, dusky eyes beneath
which tiny freckles had been sprinkled. More than once he clearly heard
her whisper courage to him.

Next day the notes in his diary were more fragmentary.

     "Broke my rule and smoked two cigars to-day. Just finished my
     fourth. Leaves one more. I drink a great deal. It helps me to
     forget I'm hungry. Find a cigar goes farther if I smoke it in
     sections. I chew the stubs while I'm working.

     "Have tunneled in about seventeen feet. No sign that I'm near the
     end of the cave-in. There's a lot of hell in being buried alive.

     "Think I'm losing my voice from shouting so much when I'm in the
     shaft. Gave it up to-day and let little Moya call for me. She's a
     trump. Wish she'd stay here all the time and not keep coming and
     going."

The jottings on the fourth day show the increase of the delirium.
Sometimes his mind appears to be quite clear, then it wanders to queer
fancies.

     "Last cigar gone. Got sick from eating the stub. Violent retchings.
     Kept falling asleep while working. Twenty-nine feet done--surely
     reach the end to-morrow.... Another cave-in just after I crawled
     out from my tunnel. All my work wiped out. Moya, the little devil,
     laughed and said it served a highgrader right....

     "Have telegraphed for help. Can't manage alone. Couldn't make it up
     the shaft and had to give up the climb. Ordered a big breakfast at
     the Silver Dollar--steak and mushrooms and hot cakes. The telegraph
     wires run through pipe along floor of tunnel. Why don't the
     operator stay on his job? I tap my signals and get no answer."

He began to talk to himself in a rambling sort of way. Sometimes he
would try to justify himself for highgrading in jerky half-coherent
phrases, sometimes he argued with Peale that he had better let him out.
But even in his delirious condition he stuck to his work in the tunnel,
though he was scarce able to drag himself about.

As the sickness grew on him, the lightheaded intervals became more
frequent. In one of these it occurred to him that he had struck high
grade ore and he filled his pockets with samples taken from the cave-in.
He spent a good deal of time explaining to Moya patiently over and over
again that the business of highgrading was justified by the conditions
under which the miners lived. There was no sequence to his thoughts.
They came in flashes without logical connection. It became, for
instance, a firm obsession that the pipe running through the tunnel was
a telegraph wire by means of which he could communicate with the outside
world if the operator would only stay on duty. But his interest in the
matter was intermittent.

It is suggestive of his condition that when Moya's answer came to his
seven taps he took it quite as a matter of course.

"The son of a Greaser is back on the job at last," he said aloud without
the least excitement. "Now, I'll get that breakfast I ordered."

He crawled back to the foot of the shaft in a childish, absurd
confidence that the food he craved would soon be sent down to him. While
he waited, Jack fell into light sleep where he lost himself in fancies
that voiced themselves in incoherent snatches of talk.

CHAPTER XXIII

CAPTAIN KILMENY RETIRES

A voice calling his name from the top of the shaft brought Jack Kilmeny
back to consciousness. He answered.

A shout of joy boomed down to him in Colter's heavy bass. He could hear,
too, the sweet troubled tones of a woman.

"Hurry, please, hurry.... Thank God, we're in time."

"Got that breakfast with you, little neighbor," Jack called up weakly.
He did not need to be told that Moya Dwight was above, and, since she
was there, of course she had brought him the breakfast that he had
ordered from the Silver Dollar.

"Get back into the tunnel, Jack," Colter presently shouted.

"What for?"

"We're lowering someone to you. The timberings are rotten and they might
fall on you. Get back."

"All right."

Five minutes later the rescuer reached the foot of the shaft. He stood
for a moment with a miner's lamp lifted above his head and peered into
the gloom.

"Where away, Jack?"

The man was Ned Kilmeny. He and Lord Farquhar had returned to the hotel
just after dinner. The captain had insisted--all the more because there
was some danger in it--that he should be the man lowered to the aid of
his cousin.

"Bring that breakfast?" Jack snapped, testily.

"Yes, old man. It's waiting up above. Brought some soup down with me."

"I ordered it two hours ago. What's been keeping you? I'm going to
complain of the service."

The captain saw at once that Jack was lightheaded and he humored him.

"Yes, I would. Now drink this soup."

The imprisoned man drained the bucket to the last drop.

Ned loosened the rope from his own body and fastened it about that of
his cousin. He gave the signal and Jack was hauled very carefully to the
surface in such a way as not to collide with the jammed timbers near the
top. Colter and Bleyer lifted the highgrader over the edge of the well,
where he collapsed at once into the arms of his friend.

Moya, a flask in her hand, stooped over the sick man where he lay on
the grass. Her fine face was full of poignant sympathy.

Kilmeny's mind was quite clear now. The man was gaunt as a famished
wolf. Bitten deep into his face were the lines that showed how closely
he had shaved death. But in his eye was the gay inextinguishable gleam
of the thoroughbred.

"Ain't I the quitter, Miss Dwight? Keeling over just like a sick baby."

The young woman choked over her answer. "You mustn't talk yet. Drink
this, please."

He drank, and later he ate sparingly of the food she had hastily
gathered from the dinner table and brought with her. In jerky little
sentences he sketched his adventure, mingling fiction with fact as the
fever grew on him again.

Bleyer, himself a game man, could not withhold his admiration after he
had heard Captain Kilmeny's story of what he had found below. The two,
with Moya, were riding behind the wagon in which the rescued man lay.

"Think of the pluck of the fellow--boring away at that cave-in when any
minute a million tons of rock and dirt might tumble down and crush the
life out of him. That's a big enough thing. But add to it his game leg
and his wound and starvation on top of that. I'll give it to him for the
gamest fellow that ever went down into a mine."

"That's not all," the captain added quietly. "He must have tunneled in
about twenty-five feet when the roof caved again. Clean bowled out as he
was, Jack tackled the job a second time."

Moya could not think of what had taken place without a film coming over
her eyes and a sob choking her throat. A vagabond and worse he might be,
but Jack Kilmeny held her love beyond recall. It was useless to remind
herself that he was unworthy. None the less, she gloried in the splendid
courage of the man. It flooded her veins joyously even while her heart
was full to overflowing with tender pity for his sufferings. Whatever
else he might be, Jack Kilmeny was every inch a man. He had in him the
dynamic spark that brought him smiling in his weakness from the presence
of the tragedy that had almost engulfed him.

There was a little discussion between Colter and Captain Kilmeny as to
which of them should take care of the invalid. The captain urged that he
would get better care at the hotel, where Lady Farquhar and India could
look after him. Colter referred the matter to Jack.

"I'm not going to burden Lady Farquhar or India. Colter can look out for
me," the sick man said.

"It's no trouble. India won't be satisfied unless you come to the
hotel," Moya said in a low voice.

He looked at her, was about to decline, and changed his mind. The
appeal in her eyes was too potent.

"I'm in the hands of my friends. Settle it any way you like, Miss
Dwight. Do whatever you want with me, except put me back in that hell."

After a doctor had seen Jack and taken care of his ankle, after the
trained nurse had arrived and been put in charge of the sick room,
Captain Kilmeny made a report to Moya and his sister.

"He's gone to sleep already. The doctor says he'll probably be as well
as ever in a week, thanks to you, Moya."

"Thanks to you, Ned," she amended.

"He sent to you this record of how he spent his time down there--said it
might amuse you."

The Captain looked straight at her as he spoke.

"I'll read it."

"Do. You'll find something on the last page that will interest you. Now,
I'm going to say good-night. It's time little girls were in bed."

He kissed his sister and Moya, rather to the surprise of the latter, for
Captain Kilmeny never insisted upon the rights of a lover. There was
something on his face she did not quite understand. It was as if he were
saying good-by instead of good-night.

She understood it presently. Ned had written a note and pinned it to the
last page of the little book. She read it twice, and then again in
tears. It told her that the soldier had read truly the secret her
anxiety had flaunted in the face of all her friends.

     "It's no go, dear girl. You've done your best, but you don't love
     me. You never will. Afraid there's no way left but for me to
     release you. So you're free again, little sweetheart.

     "I know you won't misunderstand. Never in my life have I cared for
     you so much as I do to-night. But caring isn't enough. I've had my
     chance and couldn't win out. May you have good hunting wherever you
     go."

The note was signed "Ned."

Her betrothed had played the game like the gentleman he was to a losing
finish. She knew he would not whimper or complain, that he would meet
her to-morrow cheerfully and easily, hiding even from her the wound in
his heart. He was a better man than his cousin. She could not deny to
herself that his gallantry had a finer edge. His sense of right was
better developed and his courage quite as steady. Ned Kilmeny had won
his V. C. before he was twenty-five. He had carried to a successful
issue one of the most delicate diplomatic missions of recent years.
Everybody conceded that he had a future. If Jack had never appeared on
her horizon she would have married Ned and been to him a loving wife.
But the harum-scarum cousin had made this impossible.

Why? Why had her roving heart gone out to this attractive scamp who did
not want her love or care for it? She did not know. The thing was as
unexplainable as it was inescapable. All the training of her life had
shaped her to other ends. Lady Farquhar would explain it as a glamour
cast by a foolish girl's fancy. But Moya knew the tide of feeling which
raced through her was born not of fancy but of the true romance.

CHAPTER XXIV

TWO IN A BUCKET

Jack heard the story of his rescue from India. He surprised her alone in
the breakfast room by hobbling in one morning after the rest had gone.

She popped a question directly at him. "Did the doctor say you could get
up?"

"Didn't ask him," he answered with a laugh, and dropped into a seat
across the table.

Shaven and dressed in a clean freshly pressed suit, he looked a
different man from the haggard grimy vagabond Captain Kilmeny had
brought back with him three days earlier. The eyes were still rather
sunken and the face a bit drawn, but otherwise he was his very competent
and debonair self. His "Good mornin', India," was as cheery and matter
of fact as if those five days of horror had never existed.

"Don't believe it will hurt you." Her bright eyes were warm in their
approval of him. "You look a lot fitter than you did even yesterday.
It's awfully jolly to see you around again, Cousin Jack."

"I'm enjoying it myself," he conceded. "Anything of importance in that
covered dish over there?"

"Tell me all about it," she ordered, handing him the bacon. Then, with a
shudder, she added: "Must have been rather awful down there."

"Bad enough," he admitted lightly.

"Tell me." She leaned forward, chin in hand.

"What's the use? Those fellows put me down. Your brother took me up.
That's all."

"It isn't all. Ned says it is perfectly marvelous the way you dug that
tunnel and escaped from being crushed, and then dug it again after it
had caved."

"Couldn't lie down and quit, could I? A man in the hole I was can't pick
and choose." He smiled lazily at her and took a muffin from a plate
handed him by the waiter. "My turn to ask questions. I want the full
story of how you guessed I was in the west shaft of the Golden Nugget."

"Haven't you heard? It was Moya guessed it--from the tapping on the
pipe, you know."

"So I've been told. Now let's have the particulars." His eyes went
arrow-straight into hers and rested there.

India told him. She knew that Ned would make a safer husband for Moya
than this forceful adventurer. It was quite likely to be on the cards
that he cared nothing for her friend. Indeed, his desperate flirtation
with Joyce indicated as much. Moreover, Moya would not marry a man whom
she could not respect, one who made his living by dishonest practices.
But in spite of all these objections Miss Kilmeny told her cousin how
Moya had fought for his life against ridicule and unbelief, regardless
of what any of them might think of her.

He made one comment when she had finished. "So I have to thank Moya
Dwight for my life."

"Moya alone. They laughed at her, but she wouldn't give up. I never saw
anybody so stubborn. There's something splendid in her. She didn't care
what any of us thought. The one thing in her mind was that she was going
to save you. So Mr. Bleyer had to get up from dinner and find out from
the maps where that pipe went. He traced it to the old west shaft of the
Golden Nugget."

"And what _did_ you think?" he asked, watching her steadily.

"I admired her pluck tremendously."

"Did Verinder--and Bleyer--and Lady Farquhar?"

"How do I know what they thought?" flamed the girl. "If Mr. Verinder is
cad enough----" She stopped, recalling certain obligations she was under
to that gentleman.

"Why did she do it?"

She flashed a look of feminine scorn at him. "You'll have to ask Moya
that--if you want to know."

He nodded his head slowly. "That's just what I'm going to do."

"You'll have more time to talk with her--now that Joyce is engaged and
daren't flirt with you," his cousin suggested maliciously.

Though he tried to carry this off with a laugh, the color mounted to his
face. "I've been several kinds of an idiot in my time."

"Don't you dare try any nonsense with Moya," her friend cried, a little
fiercely.

"No," he agreed.

"She's not Joyce."

He had an answer for that. "I'd marry her to-morrow if she'd take me."

"You mean you...?"

"Yes. From the first day I met her again. And I didn't know it till I
was down in that hell hole. Shall I tell you something?" He put his arms
on the table and leaned toward her with shining eyes. "She was with me
down there most of the time. Any time I stopped to listen I could hear
her whisper courage in that low, sweet voice of hers."

"You know about her and Ned?"

"Yes."

"He's a better man than you are, Jack."

"Yes."

"But you won't let him have her."

"No, by God, not unless she loves him."

"She would have loved him if it hadn't been for you."

"You mean she loves me?"

"She won't marry you. She can't."

"Why not? Because I don't belong to her social set?"

"No. That would be reason enough for Joyce or me, but I don't think it
would stop Moya."

"You mean--highgrading?"

"Yes."

Joyce interrupted further confidences by making her usual late
appearance for breakfast. At sight of Kilmeny her eyes brightened. Life
always became more interesting for her when a possible man was present.
Instantly she came forward with a touch of reluctant eagerness that was
very effective.

"I'm glad to see you up again--so glad, Mr. Kilmeny."

In the pretty breakfast gown which displayed her soft curves and the
ripe roundness of throat and arm she made a picture wholly charming. If
Jack was overpowered he gave no sign of it.

"Glad to meet you, Miss Seldon."

Her eyes rained sweet pity on him, a tenderness potent enough to disturb
the serenity of any young man not in armor.

"We--we've been so worried about you."

He laughed, genially and without resentment. "Awfully good of you.
Shall I ring for the waiter?"

India rose. "I'm going riding with Ned and Moya," she explained.

Alone with the Westerner, Joyce felt her blood begin to quicken.

"Are you quite ... recovered?" she asked.

Their eyes met. In his there was a faint cynical smile of amusement.

"Quite."

She understood the double meaning in his words. Her lashes fell to the
soft cheeks, then lifted again. "I thought perhaps there might be ...
that you might still be...."

He shook his head vigorously. "It was only a dream. I can laugh at it
now--and at myself for taking it seriously."

Joyce bit her lip with vexation. There was something not quite decent in
so prompt a recovery from her charms. He did not appear to hold even any
resentment.

Nor did he. Kilmeny had been brought too near the grim realities to hold
any petty pique. He found this young woman still charming, but his
admiration was tinctured with amusement. No longer did his imagination
play upon her personality. He focused it upon the girl who had fought
for his life against the ridicule and the suspicions of her friends. It
was impossible for him to escape the allure of her fine sweet courage
so gallantly expressed in every look and motion.

But Moya let him severely alone. Her pride was suffering because she had
showed to all her little world too keen an interest in him. In her
anxiety to repudiate any claim he might think she felt she had upon him
the girl was scornfully indifferent to his advances. Almost rudely she
rejected his gratitude.

"The man does not owe me anything. Can't he see that honors are easy?"
she said impatiently to Lady Farquhar.

Jack Kilmeny was no quitter. He set that lean jaw of his and would not
accept repulse. In four days now the Farquhar party was going to leave
Goldbanks and he made the most of his time.

Moya never saw him coming toward her without having her pulses stirred,
but her look met his always quietly and steadily. Not once did she give
him a chance to see her alone. Even Lady Farquhar, who had been a severe
critic of her vagaries, commended now her discretion. Jack rebelled
against it in vain. He could not find a chance to speak. It was
characteristic of him that he made one.

By shrewd maneuvering he arranged an expedition to the Silent Sam mine.
The property itself was of no particular interest. The attractive
feature was a descent in ore buckets from the shaft-house, perched far
up on the edge of a precipitous cliff, to the mill in the valley below.
This was made by means of heavy cables to which the buckets were
suspended. After Jack had explained how the men rode back and forth by
this means between the mill and the mine India was seized with the
inspiration he had hoped for.

"Let's go down in the buckets, dear people."

Lady Farquhar protested and was overruled by a chorus of votes. The
miner assured her that it was entirely safe. Reluctantly she gave
permission for her flock to make the trip if they desired.

They rode on horseback to the mill. Jack paired with India, making no
attempt to ride beside Moya, who brought up the rear with the captain.
The Westerner, answering the questions of his cousin, was at his
debonair best. Occasionally there drifted back to the couple in the rear
fragmentary snatches of his talk. He was telling of the time he had been
a mule skinner in New Mexico, of how he had ridden mail near Deming, and
of frontier days at Tombstone. Casual anecdotes were sprinkled through
his explanations to liven them. He spoke in the slurring drawl of the
Southwest, which went so well with the brown lean face beneath the
pinched-in felt hat and the well-packed vigor of the man.

"And what is 'bucking a sample'?" India wanted to know after one of his
stories.

"You just pound some rock up and mix it to get a sample. Once when I was
drag-driver of a herd in a round-up...."

Moya heard no more. She turned her attention resolutely to her companion
and tried to detach her mind from the man in front. She might as well
have tried to keep her heart from beating.

After they had arrived at the mill Jack quietly took charge of the
disposition of the party. Verinder and Joyce were sent up in the first
bucket. When this was halfway up to the mine the cable stopped to let
another couple enter a bucket. Joyce, fifty feet up in the air, waved
her hand to those below.

"You next, India," ordered her cousin.

The young woman stepped into the bucket. "I'm 'fraid," she announced
promptly.

"No need to be. Captain, your turn."

The eyes of the two men met. Ned Kilmeny guessed instantly that the
other had arranged this so as to get a few minutes alone with Moya. He
took a place beside his sister immediately.

The cable did not stop again until the second pair of passengers had
reached the mine.

Moya, followed by Jack, stepped into the basket, which began to rise
steadily as it moved across the valley.

Kilmeny did not lose a minute.

"Why don't you let me see you alone? Why do you run away from me?" he
demanded.

Little patches of color burned beneath the shadows of her eyes. A sound
as of a distant surf began to beat in her ears.

"What nonsense! Why should I run from you?" she asked, meeting with
difficulty the attack of his masterful gaze.

"Because you're afraid to let me tell you that I love you," he charged.

"Thought it was Joyce you ... fancied," she retorted quietly, her pulse
hammering.

"So it was. I fancied her. I love you. I'm asking you to marry me."

"You don't have to ask me to marry you because you exaggerate the
service I did you."

"I ask you because I love you."

"Thank you very much for the compliment. Sorry I must decline." She did
not dare look at him. Her eyes were fixed on the mill far below.

"Why must you--since you love me?"

The telltale pink stained her cheeks. "You take that for granted, do
you?"

"It's true, I believe. How can I make love to you as other men do? Lady
Farquhar won't let me see you alone--even if you were willing to give me
a chance. In two days you are going out of my life. I must speak the
truth ... bluntly. I love you. It has been that way with me ever since
you came into my life again, little Moya. But I was blind and didn't see
it till ... till I was alone in the mine with death."

"I ... am sorry."

"That is not enough. I'm going to have the truth. You saved my life.
What for? It is yours ... if you will take it."

She looked straight at him. "I can't marry you."

"Why can't you? Can you say that you don't love me?"

In the full-charged silence that followed a stifling emotion raced
through her blood. The excitement in her set a pulse beating in her
throat. Womanlike, she evaded the issue.

"The cable has stopped. What has happened?"

"Nothing has happened. It has stopped because I arranged with the
engineer at the hoist to have it stop. When I give the signal it will
start again."

"But...."

He brushed aside her futile protest. "I'm going to have this out with
you. Dare you tell me that you don't love me, Moya?"

He forced her to meet his eyes, and in that moment she felt weak and
faint. The throb of passion beat tumultuously against her will.

"Please ... be generous. What will they think? Let us start," she
begged.

"They will think something is wrong with the machinery. But it doesn't
matter in the least what they think. It's my last chance, and I'll not
give it up. You've got to answer me."

The point where the bucket had stopped was a hundred feet above the
ground below. She looked down, and shuddered.

"It's so far down ... please."

"Then don't look down. Look at me, Moya. It won't take you a moment to
answer me."

"I have. I said I couldn't marry you."

"Tell me that you don't love me and I'll give the signal."

"I ... don't."

"Look straight at me and say it."

She tried to look at him and repeat it, but her eyes betrayed the secret
she was fighting to keep from him. The long lashes fell to the hot
cheeks an instant too late.

His hand found hers. "My little Irish wild rose, all sweetness and
thorns," he murmured.

Above the tumult of her heart she heard her voice say, as if it were
that of a stranger, "It's no use ... I can't ... marry you."

"Because I'm a highgrader?"

She nodded.

"Do you think I'm worse than other men? Down in the bottom of your heart
do you believe that?"

She smiled wanly. "Other men are not ... making love to me."

"Am I nothing but a thief to you?"

"I have told you that you are the man I ... love. Isn't that a good
deal?"

The desire of her, pure as a flame, swept through him. "It's the
greatest thing that ever came into my life. Do you think I'm going to
let it end there? I'm going to fight for our happiness. I'm going to
beat down the things that come between us."

"You can't. It's too late," she cried wistfully.

"It's never too late for love so long as we're both alive."

"Not for love, but...."

"You've got to see this as I see it, sweetheart. I'm a man--primitive,
if you like. I've done wild and evil things--plenty of them. What of
that? I slough them off and trample them down. The heart of me is clean,
isn't it?"

"Yes."

To look at him was enough to clear away all doubt. He had the faults
that go with full-blooded elemental life, but at bottom this virile
American was sound.

"Well! Isn't that enough?"

The little movement of her hands toward him seemed to beg for pity.
"Jack! I can't help it. Maybe I'm a little prig, but ... mustn't we
guide our lives by principle and not by impulse?"

"Do I guide mine by impulse?"

"Don't you?" She hurried on to contradict, or at least to modify, her
reluctant charge. "Oh, I know you are a great influence here. You're
known all over the state. Men follow you wherever you lead. Why should I
criticize you--I, who have done nothing all my life but lean on others?"

"Go ahead. When I ask you to marry me I invite your criticism."

"I have to take little steps and to keep in well-worn paths. I can't
make laws for myself as you do. Those that have been made may be wrong,
but I must obey them."

"Why? Why should you? If they're wrong, fight against them."

"I can't argue with you ... dear. But I know what I think right. I
_want_ to think as you do. Oh, you don't know how I long to throw my
Puritan conscience overboard and just trust your judgment. I ... admire
you tremendously. But I can't give in ... I can't."

The muscles stood out on his lean cheeks as he set his teeth. "You've
got to, Moya. Our love has been foreordained. Do you think it is for
nothing that we met again after all these years? You're mine--the one
woman in the world I want and am going to have."

She shook her head sadly. "No ... no!"

"Is it the money I have made highgrading? Is that what stands between
us? If I were able to come to you without a dollar but with clean
hands--would you marry me then?"

He leaned toward her, eager, ardent, passionate, the color in his cheeks
burning to a dull brick tint beneath the tan. Body and soul she swayed
toward him. All her vital love of life, of things beautiful and good and
true, fused in a crescendo of emotion.

"My dear ... my dear, I'm only a girl--and I love you." Somehow her
hands were buried in the strong grip of his. "But ... I can't live on
the profits of what I think is wrong. If it weren't for that ... Jack,
I'd marry you if you were a pauper--and thank God for the chance."

He faced her doggedly. "I'm not a pauper. I've fought for my share of
the spoils. You've been brought up in a hot-house. Out in the world a
man wins because he's strong. Do you think it's all been play with me?
By God, no! I've ridden night herd in a blizzard when the temperature
was below zero. I've done my shift on the twelfth level of the Never
Quit many a month. I've mushed in Alaska and fought against Castro in
Venezuela. Do you think I'm going to give up my stake now I've won it at
last?"

She looked at him tremulously. "I don't ask you to give it up. You'll
have to decide that for yourself."

"Don't you see I _can't_ give it up? If I do, I lose you. How can I take
care of you without money?"

"I'd do my best, Jack."

"You don't understand. It would be for years--until I had made another
start. I wouldn't let you give up everything unless I had something to
offer. I wouldn't consider it."

"Isn't that putting pride before love, Jack? You know I have a little
money of my own. We could live--in very decent poverty. I would love to
feel that we were fighting ... together. We both know you'll win in the
end. Wouldn't it be fine to work out your success in partnership? Dear,
I'd _rather_ marry you while you're still a poor man."

For a moment the vision of it tempted him, but he put the dream away.
"No. It won't do. Of course I'm going to win out in the end, but it
might take a dozen years to set me on Easy street. For a woman brought
up as you have been poverty is hell."

"Then you think I'm only a doll," she flashed. "You want to put me back
in that hot-house you mentioned. I'm just an ornament to dress up and
look at and play with."

"I think you're a little tinder-box," he said, smiling ruefully.

"Don't you see how it is with me, Jack? I've always craved life. I've
wanted to take hold of it with both hands and without gloves. But they
would never let me. I've got my chance now ... if you really love me
more than you do your pride and your money. I want to live close to the
people--as you do."

"What did that suit cost you?" he asked abruptly.

"Don't remember. Twenty-five pounds, maybe. Why?"

"One hundred twenty dollars, say. And you need dozens of dresses in a
season. I'll make a guess that it takes five thousand a year to clothe
you. That is nearly twice as much as I'll earn altogether next year if I
throw away my stake."

She waved his argument aside. "Stupid boy! I have dresses enough to last
me for five years--if you'll let me be that poor man's wife. I can make
them over myself later and still be the best dressed woman in camp."

From above came Captain Kilmeny's shout. "We telephoned down. The
engineer has the trouble arranged."

The cable began to move.

"When shall I see you alone again, Moya?" Jack demanded.

"I don't know."

"I'm going to see you. We've got to fight this out. I'll not let Lady
Farquhar keep me from seeing you alone. It's serious business."

"Yes," she admitted. "I'll tell Lady Jim. But ... there's no use in
letting you think I'll give up. I can't."

"You've got to give up. That's all there is to it." His jaw was set like
a vise.

The party above fell upon them as they landed.

"Were you frightened, Moya?" exclaimed Joyce above the chorus of
questions.

"Just for a moment." Moya did not look at Jack. "Mr. Kilmeny told me it
would be all right."

Jack's eyes danced. "I told her we would work out of the difficulty if
she would trust me."

Moya blushed. It happened that Captain Kilmeny was looking directly at
her when his cousin spoke.

CHAPTER XXV

HOMING HEARTS

Jack Kilmeny had not been brought up in the dry sunbaked West for
nothing. The winds of the Rockies had entered into his character as well
as into his physique. He was a willful man, with a good deal of granite
in his make-up. A fighter from his youth, he did not find it easy to
yield the point upon which he differed from Moya. There was in her so
much of impulsive generosity that he had expected to overpower her
scruples. But she stood like a rock planted in the soil.

It came to him as he walked home after a long fight with her that in his
heart he did not want her to yield. She was the Moya Dwight he loved
because she would not compromise with her conviction. Yet, though he
wanted her to stand firm, he hated the thought of giving way himself. It
galled his pride that he must come to her without a penny, knowing that
she had the means to keep them both modestly. Nor could he, without a
pang, think of surrendering the twenty-eight thousand dollars he had
fought for and won. He was no visionary. The value of money he
understood perfectly. It stood for power, place, honor, the things that
were worth having. Given what he had, Jack knew he could double it in
Goldbanks within the year. There were legitimate opportunities for
investment that were bound to make rich returns. But without a dollar he
would be like Samson shorn of his locks.

All through the night he was joined in battle with himself, but when at
early dawn he stood on the top of Son-of-a-Gun hill and faced a sky
faintly pink with the warning of a coming sun his decision had been
made.

On his way back he met Moya and Miss Seldon. Joyce pounced upon him with
a grievance.

"You haven't told me yet how much you're going to give for the new
hospital, Mr. Kilmeny. You know we're leaving to-morrow, and you'll have
to decide at once. Be generous, please. You said yourself it was a good
cause."

He nodded agreement. "The most worthy charity I know. I've often
wondered why some Andrew Carnegie didn't set the fashion of endowing
hospitals by wholesale. They ought to be free to all poor folks out of
health. When a man is losing his wages and his family is scrimping he
ought not to be facing a thirty-dollar-a-week hospital charge. Yes, I'm
for the new hospital, Miss Seldon."

"How strong are you for it?" Joyce asked, laughing at her newly acquired
American slang. "Mr. Verinder has promised to give me two dollars for
every one I can raise among my other friends. So don't be a--a----"

"A tightwad," supplied Moya with a smile. She could do a little in the
native slang herself.

Jack went into his pocket for a checkbook and a fountain pen. He wrote
for a few seconds, tore the check from the stub, and handed it to Joyce.

That young woman gasped.

"Why--you don't really mean--it's for twenty-eight thousand two hundred
and fourteen dollars," she cried.

"And seventeen cents. Please don't forget that," he added.

"But--what on earth do you mean?"

Jack was looking at Moya, and she at him with shining eyes in which joy
swam.

"It's a little thank offering, Miss Seldon."

"Because you were rescued from the mine, I suppose. Still...."

"Because I'm engaged to be married to the best woman in the world," he
corrected.

Joyce whirled upon Moya with instant divination. "You little wretch, and
you never told me."

If Miss Dwight had not known it herself till this moment she gave no
sign to that effect. "We're telling you now, dear," she explained.

"How long have you been engaged? Was it yesterday in the bucket?"

Jack laughed. "Nothing so romantic. We've been engaged a little less
than half a minute. You get the first chance to wish Moya joy on having
won so great a catch. She's marrying a pauper, you know."

"I think we're very rich," differed his sweetheart shyly.

Joyce looked from one to the other suspiciously. "I haven't a notion
what either of you mean, but I know I'm going to hang on to this check,
Mr. Millionaire Pauper."

Imps of mischief sparkled in the highgrader's eyes. "Don't forget that
Verinder has to write one for twice as much."

Miss Seldon could not help laughing. "I'll see to that. He's not a
welcher, but ... I wonder how he'll look when I tell him."

"You ought to tell him as soon as you can," Jack hinted boldly.

"Oh, ought I? Did you say you had been engaged less than a minute, Mr.
Kilmeny? How much will you give me to go down now and tell him?"

"I've nothing left to give--except my gratitude."

"You're the first man who ever was so ungallant as to tell me he would
be grateful to have me leave him."

"I'm the first who ever proposed to another girl in your presence. The
circumstance is unusual," he flung back gayly.

"I didn't hear you propose. All you did was to announce it," she replied
saucily.

"That's true too," admitted Kilmeny. "Well, I'm going to propose now if
it isn't too late. You may stay if you like."

"Thanks, no." Joyce kissed her friend. "I hope you'll be very happy,
dear. I ... I believe you will."

Moya choked on her words. "I know I shall, Joy."

Miss Seldon looked at Jack with an expression in which embarrassment and
audacity were blended. "I've always rather liked your pauper," she
confided aloud to Moya.

Her confidences had their limits. She omitted to mention what had just
popped into her mind, that within the fortnight he had proposed to her
too on the same spot.

Jack bowed with exaggerated deference when she shook hands with him. He
was just now riding the seventh wave of happiness and felt friendly to
the whole world.

"Thanks very much. You're a good scout, Joyce."

"Good gracious! What may that be? Some more of your American slang, I
suppose." She broke away from persiflage to add seriously: "You're
right about one thing, though. You've got the best girl in the world. Be
good to her, Jack Kilmeny."

With that she turned and walked down the hill.

The other two walked up.

"I'm so proud of you, Jack, boy," whispered one of them.

He laughed happily. "I'm proud of myself. I've done the best day's work
I ever did for myself when I won Moya Dwight."

"You know what I mean, Jack. What other man would have thrown away a
small fortune--all he had--just for me?"

"I can name one other," suggested Kilmeny.

"Ned! But he's a saint."

"And I'm a sinner," her lover replied blithely.

"You're the sinner I love, then."

They had reached a clump of firs. Without knowing how it happened she
found herself in his arms. There were both tears and laughter in her
eyes as her lips turned slowly to meet his.

"The first time since we were kiddies on the _Victorian_, sweetheart,"
he told her.

"Yes, it's true. I loved you then. I love you now.... Jack, boy, I'm
just the happiest girl alive."

A mist-like veil of old rose hung above the mountain tops. Hand in hand
they watched the rising sun pierce through it and flood the crotches of
the hills with God's splendid canvases. It was a part of love's egoism
that all this glory of the young day seemed an accompaniment to the song
of joy that pulsed through them.

Later they came to earth and babbled the nonsense that is the highest
wisdom of lovers. They built air castles and lived in them, seeing life
through a poetic ambient as a long summer day in which they should ride
and work and play together.

At last she remembered Lady Farquhar and began to laugh.

"We must go down and tell her at once, Jack."

He agreed. "Yes, let's go back and have it out. If you like you may go
to your room and I'll tackle her alone."

"I'd rather go with you."

He delighted in her answer.

Farquhar was taking an early morning stroll, arm in arm with Lady Jim,
when he caught sight of them.

"Look, Di!"

Both of the lovers knew how to walk. Lady Farquhar, watching them,
thought she had never seen as fine a pair of untamed human beings. In
his step was the fine free swing of the hillman, and the young woman
breasted the slope lightly as a faun.

The Englishman chuckled. "You're beaten, Di. The highwayman wins."

"Nonsense," she retorted sharply, but with anxiety manifest in her
frown.

"Fact, just the same. He's coming to tell us he means to take our little
girl to his robber den."

"I believe you'd actually let him," she said scornfully.

"Even you can't stop him. It's written in the books. Not sure I'd
interfere if I could. For a middle-aged Pharisee with the gout I'm
incurably romantic. It's the child's one great chance for happiness. But
I wish to the deuce he wasn't a highgrader."

"She shan't sacrifice herself if I can prevent it," Lady Farquhar
insisted stanchly.

"I 'member a girl who sacrificed herself for a line lieutenant without a
shilling to call his own," he soliloquized aloud. "Would have him, and
did, by Jove! Three deaths made him Lord Farquhar later, but she married
the penniless subaltern."

"I've always been glad I did." She squeezed his arm fondly. "But this is
different, James."

Kilmeny and Moya stopped. The young man doffed his gray felt hat and
bowed.

"Mornin', Lady Farquhar--Lord Farquhar. We've come to ask your
permission for our marriage."

"Mornin', rebels. Fancy I'll have to refuse it," cut back Farquhar, eyes
twinkling. For this bold directness pleased and amused him.

"That would distress us extremely," answered Kilmeny with a genial
smile.

"But would not affect your plans, I understand you to mean."

"You catch the idea exactly, sir."

Lady Farquhar entered the conversation. "Are you planning to go to
prison with him, Moya, when he is convicted of highgrading?" she asked
pleasantly.

Moya told in three sentences of what her lover had done. The Englishman
wrung Kilmeny's hand cordially.

"By Jove, you reform thoroughly when you go about it. Don't think I'd
have enjoyed writing that check for Miss Joyce. Leaves you strapped,
does it?"

"Dead broke," came the very cheerful reply.

"But of course Moya has some money," said Lady Farquhar quietly.

The Westerner winced. "Wish she hadn't. It's the only thing I have to
forgive her."

Farquhar lifted his eyebrows. "Di," he remonstrated.

His wife came to time with a frank apology. "That was downright nasty of
me, Mr. Kilmeny. I withdraw it. None the less, I think Moya would be
throwing herself away. Do you realize what you are proposing? She's been
used to the best ever since she was born. Have you the means to supply
her needs? Or are you considering a Phyllida and Corydon idyll in a
cottage?"

"It will have to be something of that sort at first. I've told her all
this too, Lady Farquhar."

"What does that matter if we love each other?" Moya asked.

"You'll find it matters a good deal," said Lady Jim dryly. "When poverty
comes in love is likely to wink out any day. Of course I realize that
yours is of a quality quite unusual. It always is, my dear. Every lover
has thought that since time began."

"We'll have to take our fighting chance of that," Jack replied.

Moya, her eyes shining, nodded agreement. No great gain can be won
without risk. She knew there was a chance that she might not find
happiness in her love. But where it called her she must follow--to a
larger life certainly, to joy and to sorrow, to the fuller experiences
that must come to every woman who fulfills her destiny.

A voice hailed Jack. Colter was hurrying up the street, plainly excited.
Kilmeny moved a few steps toward him.

Lady Jim took advantage of his absence to attack Moya from another
angle. "My dear, I wish I could show you how much depends on a
similarity of tastes, of habits, of standards. Matrimony means more than
love. It means adjustment."

"I've thought of that too. But ... when you love enough that doesn't
help the adjustment?" asked the girl naïvely.

She had appealed to Farquhar. That gentleman came to her assistance. "It
does."

"This isn't a matter to be decided merely by personal preference," urged
the older woman. "There may be--consequences."

The color beat into the face of the young woman in a wave, but her eyes
held steadily to those of Lady Farquhar.

"I ... hope so."

"Bravo, Moya!" applauded her guardian, clapping his hands softly.

"Don't you think they--the consequences--deserve a better chance than
you will give them?"

"I'll answer that, Di," spoke up Farquhar. "When a girl chooses for the
father of her children a man who is clean and strong and virile, and on
top of that her lover, she is giving them the best possible chance in
life."

Moya's gratitude shone through the eyes that met those of her guardian.

Kilmeny swung back to the group he had left. "I've good news, friends.
This is my lucky day. You remember that when I was rescued from the
Golden Nugget my pockets were full of ore samples I had picked up as I
was tunneling."

"Yes ... picked them up while you were delirious, didn't you?" Farquhar
replied.

"Must have, I reckon. Well, you know how miners are always having pieces
of quartz assayed. Colter took these to the man we employ. He's just
learned that it is high-grade stuff."

"You've made a strike?"

"Looks like it. Colter wasn't taking any chances, anyhow. He hiked right
around to the owners of the mine and signed up a five-year lease in his
name and mine."

Farquhar shook hands with him cordially. "Hope you make a fortune,
Kilmeny."

Moya's chaperon, facing the inevitable, capitulated as graceful as she
could. After all, the girl might have done worse. The man she had chosen
was well born, good looking, forceful, and a leader in his community. If
this fortunate strike was going to leave him well off, clearly she must
make the best of him.

"You're a lucky man. I hope you know you don't deserve a girl like
Moya," she told him as she shook hands.

"I know it, all right. Can you tell me who does?" he flung back, with a
gay insouciant smile.

At that moment Ned Kilmeny stepped out upon the hotel porch. Lady Jim
nodded toward him.

"Perhaps," his cousin conceded. "But in this little old world a man
doesn't get what he deserves."

"I see he doesn't. Ned is a better man than you."

"Yes," he admitted.

Captain Kilmeny, coming down the porch steps, saw in a flash what had
happened. He came forward with the even stride and impassive face that
seldom deserted him. In two sentences Lady Farquhar told him the facts.

"You lucky dog," he said to his cousin as their hands gripped.

Jack had never liked him better than in this moment when he was giving
up so cheerfully the thing he wanted most in the world.

"It isn't always the best man that wins, captain. I take off my hat to
the better men who have tried and failed. Perhaps it may be a comfort to
them to know that I'm the man that needs her most."

The captain turned to Moya. "So you've found that good hunting already,"
he said to her in a low voice.

"Yes, I think I have ... I'm sure of it, Ned." Her eyes were full of
tender sympathy for him. She wished she could tell him how much she
admired his fine spirit.

"God keep you happy," he said wistfully.

Jack joined them and slipped Moya's arm into his. "Amen to that,
captain. And since Jack Kilmeny has been appointed deputy on the job I'm
going to see your wish comes true."

Moya looked at her lover and smiled.

Nine Splendid Novels by
WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE

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CROOKED TRAILS AND STRAIGHT

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BRAND BLOTTERS

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A TEXAS RANGER

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    into the mesquit, saved the life of an innocent man after a series
    of thrilling adventures, followed a fugitive to Wyoming, and then
    passed through deadly peril to ultimate happiness.

    _12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._

WYOMING

    In this vivid story of the outdoor West the author has captured the
    breezy charm of "cattleland," and brings out the turbid life of the
    frontier with all its engaging dash and vigor.

    _12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA

    The scene is laid in the mining centers of Montana, where politics
    and mining industries are the religion of the country. The political
    contest, the love scene, and the fine character drawing give this
    story great strength and charm.

    _12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._

BUCKY O'CONNOR

    Every chapter teems with wholesome, stirring adventures, replete
    with the dashing spirit of the border, told with dramatic dash and
    absorbing fascination of style and plot.

    _12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._

THREE SPLENDID BOOKS BY ALFRED HENRY LEWIS

FARO NELL AND HER FRIENDS

    A new story of "Wolfville" days--the best of all. It pictures the
    fine comradeship, broad understanding and simple loyalty of Faro
    Nell to her friends. Here we meet again Old Monte, Dave Tutt,
    Cynthiana, Pet-Named Original Sin, Dead Shot Baker, Doc Peets, Old
    Man Enright, Dan Boggs, Texas and Black Jack, the rough-actioned,
    good-hearted men and women who helped to make this author famous as
    a teller of tales of Western frontier life.

    _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Popular Edition. 50 Cents_

THE APACHES OF NEW YORK

    A truthful account of actual happenings in the underworld of vice
    and crime in the metropolis, that gives an appalling insight into
    the life of the New York criminal. It contains intimate, inside
    information concerning the gang fights and the gang tyranny that has
    since startled the entire world. The book embraces twelve stories of
    grim, dark facts secured directly from the lips of the police and
    the gangsters themselves.

    _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Popular Edition. 50 Cents_

THE STORY OF PAUL JONES

    A wonderful historical romance. A story of the boyhood and later
    life of that daring and intrepid sailor whose remains are now in
    America. Thousands and tens of thousands have read it and admired
    it. Many consider it one of the best books Mr. Lewis has produced.

    _12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Popular Edition. 50 Cents_

G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
Publishers      New York

BOOKS BY EDWARD MARSHALL

BAT--An Idyl of New York

    "The heroine has all the charm of Thackeray's Marchioness in New
    York surroundings."--_New York Sun_. "It would be hard to find a
    more charming, cheerful story."--_New York Times_. "Altogether
    delightful."--_Buffalo Express_. "The comedy is delicious."--
    _Sacramento Union_. "It is as wholesome and fresh as the breath of
    springtime."--_New Orleans Picayune_. 12mo, cloth. Illustrated.
    $1.00 net.

THE MIDDLE WALL

    _The Albany Times-Union_ says of this story of the South African
    diamond mines and adventures in London, on the sea and in America:
    "As a story teller Mr. Marshall cannot be improved upon, and whether
    one is looking for humor, philosophy, pathos, wit, excitement,
    adventure or love, he will find what he seeks, aplenty, in this
    capital tale." 12mo, cloth. Illustrated. 50 cents.

                     _BOOKS NOVELIZED FROM GREAT PLAYS_

THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE

    From the successful play of EDGAR JAMES. Embodying a wonderful
    message to both husbands and wives, it tells how a determined man,
    of dominating personality and iron will, leaves a faithful wife for
    another woman. 12mo, cloth. Illustrated from scenes in the play. Net
    $1.25.

THE WRITING ON THE WALL

    _The Rocky Mountain News_: "This novelization of OLGA NETHERSOLE'S
    play tells of Trinity Church and its tenements. It is a powerful,
    vital novel." 12mo, cloth. Illustrated. 50 cents.

THE OLD FLUTE PLAYER

    Based on CHARLES T. DAZEY'S play, this story won the friendship of
    the country very quickly. The _Albany Times-Union_: "Charming enough
    to become a classic." 12mo, cloth. Illustrated 50 cents.

THE FAMILY

    Of this book (founded on the play by ROBERT HOBART DAVIS), _The
    Portland (Oregon) Journal_ said: "Nothing more powerful has recently
    been put between the covers of a book." 12mo, cloth. Illustrated. 50
    cents.

THE SPENDTHRIFT

    _The Logansport (Ind.) Journal_: "A tense story founded on PORTER
    EMERSON BROWNE'S play, is full of tremendous situations, and
    preaches a great sermon." 12mo, cloth bound, with six illustrations
    from scenes in the play, 50 cents.

IN OLD KENTUCKY

    Based upon CHARLES T. DAZEY'S well-known play, which has been
    listened to with thrilling interest by over seven million people.
    "A new and powerful novel, fascinating in its rapid action. Its
    teaching story is told more elaborately and even more absorbingly
    than it was upon the stage."--_Nashville American_, 12mo, cloth.
    Illustrated. 50 cents.

ALBERT ROSS' ROMANCES

A NEW EDITION AT A POPULAR PRICE

Albert Ross is a brilliant and wonderfully successful writer whose books
have sold far into the millions. Primarily his novels deal with the
sex-problem, but he depicts vice with an artistic touch and never makes
it unduly attractive. Gifted with a fine dramatic instinct, his
characters become living, moving human beings full of the fire and
passion of loving just as they are in real life. His stories contain all
the elements that will continue to keep him at the head of American
novelists in the number of his admirers.

Mr. Ross is to be congratulated on the strength as well as the purity of
his work. It shows that he is not obliged to confine his pen to any
single theme, and that he has a good a right to be called the "American
Eugene Sue" or the "American Zola."

_12mo, cloth. Price per volume, 50 cents._

    Black Adonis, A                      Original Sinner, An
    Garston Bigamy, The                  Out of Wedlock
    Her Husband's Friend                 Speaking of Ellen
    His Foster Sister                    Stranger than Fiction
    His Private Character                Sugar Princess, A
    In Stella's Shadow                   That Gay Deceiver
    Love at Seventy                      Their Marriage Bond
    Love Gone Astray                     Thou Shalt Not
    Moulding a Maiden                    Thy Neighbor's Wife
    Naked Truth, The                     Why I'm Single
    New Sensation, A                     Young Fawcett's Mabel
    Young Miss Giddy

G. W. DILLINGHAM CO.
Publishers  New York

"THE ART OF THE PHOTOPLAY" is a condensed textbook of the technical
knowledge necessary for the preparation and sale of motion picture
scenarios. More than 35,000 photoplays are produced annually in the
United States. The work of staff-writers is insufficient. Free-lance
writers have greater opportunities than ever before, for the producing
companies can not secure enough good comedies and dramas for their
needs. The first edition of this book met with unusual success. Its
author, now the Director General of Productions for the Beaux Arts Film
Corporation, is the highest paid scenario writer in the world, as well
as being a successful producing manager. Among his successes were the
scenarios for the spectacular productions: "Robin Hood," "The Squaw
Man," "The Banker's Daughter," "The Fire King," "Checkers," "The Curse
of Cocaine" and "The Kentucky Derby."

WHAT THOSE WHO KNOW HAVE SAID:

"In my opinion, based upon six years' experience producing motion
pictures, Mr. Eustace Hale Ball is the most capable scenario writer in
the business to-day." (Signed) W. F. Haddock, Producing Director with
Edison, Eclair, All Star, and now President, Mirror Film Corporation.

"Mr. Ball has thoroughly grasped present day and future possibilities of
the Moving Picture business with relation to the opportunities for real
good work by scenario writers." (Signed) P. Kimberley, Managing
Director, Imperial Film Company, Ltd., London, England.

"To those who wish to earn some of the money which the moving picture
folk disburse, Eustace Hale Ball proffers expert and valuable advice."
_New York Times Review of Books_.

"Ball's Art of the Photoplay puts into concrete form, with expert
simplicity, the secrets of writing photoplays which appeal to the
millions of Americans who attend the theatres and the producers can not
buy enough of such plays to satisfy the exhibitors." (Signed) Robert Lee
Macnabb, National Vice-President, Motion Picture Exhibitor's League of
America.

"You have succeeded in producing a clear and helpful exposition of the
subject." (Signed) Wm. R. Kane, Editor of "The Editor Magazine."

_12 mo. Cloth bound, $1.00 Net._

G. W. DILLINGHAM CO., Publishers NEW YORK

By MRS. GEORGE SHELDON DOWNS

KATHERINE'S SHEAVES

A Great Novel With a Great Purpose

    Katherine's Sheaves is altogether delightful, a charming piece of
    fiction, a beautiful romance. One must admire the book for its
    characterization, its brilliant pictures of life, and its dramatic
    situations, but still more for its philosophy and wisdom.

    The story is a dramatic one, abounding in strong situations.

    The plot is well conceived and carried out, the style easy and the
    characters likable.

    _12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._

STEP BY STEP

    Judged as a story pure and simple, "STEP BY STEP" is altogether
    delightful. But it is not merely a charming piece of fiction.
    Ethical in its nature, the underlying thought shows throughout the
    lofty purpose and high ideals of the author, and exhales a wholesome
    atmosphere, while the element of romance pervading it is both
    elevated and enriched by its purity and simplicity.

    _12mo, Cloth, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._

GERTRUDE ELLIOT'S CRUCIBLE

    It is a readable story, clean, wholesome, and high in moral
    tone--optimistic and constructive.

    It has an alluring plot, and is well and skillfully worked out. The
    incidents are dramatic, and therefore always striking, and the
    entire romance will hold the attention of the reader.

    _12mo, Cloth Bound, Illustrated. Popular Edition, 50 cents._

REDEEMED