But Mary responded not at all. Rather, as Bennington arose, she fell, until at last she hardly even moved in her place.

"Chirk up, chirk up!" cried Mrs. Lawton gaily, for her. "I know some one who ought to be happy, anyhow." She glanced meaningly from one to the other and laughed heartily.

Bennington felt a momentary disgust at her tactlessness, but covered it with some laughing sally of his own. The meal broke up in great good humour. Mrs. Lawton and Maude Eliza remained to clear away the dishes. Mr. Lawton remarked that he must get back to work, and shook hands in farewell most elaborately. Bennington laughingly promised them all that he would surely come again. Then he escaped, and followed Mary up the hill, surmising truly enough that she had gone on toward the Rock. He thought he caught a glimpse of her through the elders. He hastened his footsteps. At this he stumbled slightly. From his pocket fell a letter he had received that morning. He picked it up and looked at it idly.

It was from his mother and covered a number of closely-written pages. As he was about to thrust it back into his pocket a single sentence caught his eye. It read: "Sally Ogletree gave a supper last week, which was a very pretty affair."

He stopped short on the trail, and the world seemed to go black around him. He almost fell. Then resumed his way, but step now was hesitating and slow, and he walked with his eyes bent thoughtfully on the ground.



CHAPTER XVII

NOBLESSE OBLIGE

The thought which caused Bennington de Lane so suddenly look grave was suggested by the sentence in his mother's letter. For the first time he realized that these people, up to now so amusing, were possibly destined to come into intimate relations with himself. Old Bill Lawton was Mary's father; while Mrs. Lawton was Mary's mother; Maude was Mary's sister.

The next instant a great rush of love into his heart drove this feeling from it. What matter anything, provided she loved him and he loved her? Generous sentiment so filled him that there was room for nothing else. He even experienced dimly in the depths of his consciousness, a faint pale joy that in thus accepting what was disagreeable to his finer sensibilities, he was proving more truly to his own self the boundlessness of his love. For the moment he was exalted by this instant revulsion against anything calculating in his passion. And then slowly, one by one, the objections stole back, like a flock of noisome sombre creatures put to flight by a sudden movement, but now returning to their old nesting places. The very unassuming method of their recurrence lent them an added influence. Almost before Bennington knew it they had established a case, and he found himself face to face with a very ugly problem.

Perhaps it will be a little difficult for the average and democratic reader to realize fully the terrible proportions of this problem. We whose lives assume little, require little of them. Intangible objections to the desires of our hearts do not count for much against their realization; there needs the rough attrition of reality to turn back our calm, complacent acquisition of that which we see to be for our best interest in the emotional world. Claims of ancestry mean nothing. Claims of society mean not much more. Claims of wealth are considered as evanescent among a class of men who, by their efforts and genius, are able to render absolute wealth itself an evanescent quality. When one of us loves, he questions the worth of the object of his passion. That established, nothing else is of great importance. There is a grand and noble quality in this, but it misses much. About the other state of affairs—wherein the woman's appurtenances of all kinds, as well as the woman herself, are significant—is a delicate and subtle aura of the higher refinement—the long refinement of the spirit through many generations—which, to an eye accustomed to look for gradations of moral beauty, possesses a peach-blow iridescence of its own. From one point of view, the old-fashioned forms of thought and courtesy are stilted and useless. From another they retain still the lofty dignity of noblesse oblige.

So we would have none set down Bennington de Laney as a prig or a snob because he did not at once decide for his heart as against his aristocratic instincts. Not only all his early education, but the life lessons of many generations of ancestors had taught him to set a fictitious value on social position. He was a de Laney on both sides. He had never been allowed to forget it. A long line of forefathers, proud-eyed in their gilded frames, mutely gazed their sense of the obligations they had bequeathed to this last representative of their race. When one belongs to a great family he can not live entirely for himself. His disgrace or failure reflects not alone on his own reputation, but it sullies the fair fame of men long dead and buried; and this is a dreadful thing. For all these old Puritans and Cavaliers, these knights and barons, these king's councillors and scholars, have perchance lived out the long years of their lives with all good intent and purpose and with all earnestness of execution, merely that they might build and send down to posterity this same fair fame. It is a bold man, or a wicked man, who will dare lightly to bring the efforts of so many lives to naught! In the thought of these centuries of endeavour, the sacrifice of mere personal happiness does not seem so great an affair after all. The Family Name has taken to itself a soul. It is a living thing. It may be worked for, it may be nourished by affection, it may even be worshipped. Men may give their lives to it with as great a devotion, with as exalted a sense of renunciation, and as lofty a joy in that renunciation, as those who vow allegiance to St. Francis or St. Dominic. The tearing of the heart from the bosom often proves to be a mortal hurt when there is nothing to put in the gap of its emptiness. Not so when a tradition like this may partly take its place.

These, and more subtle considerations, were the noblest elements of Bennington de Laney's doubts. But perhaps they were no more potent than some others which rushed through the breach made for them in the young man's decision.

He had always lived so much at home that he had come to accept the home point of view without question. That is to say, he never examined the value of his parent's ideas, because it never occurred to him to doubt them. He had no perspective.

In a way, then, he accepted as axioms the social tenets held by his mother, or the business methods practised by his father. He believed that elderly men should speak precisely, and in grammatical, but colourless English. He believed also that people should, in society, conduct themselves according to the fashion-plate pattern designed by Mrs. de Laney. He believed these things, not because he was a fool, or shallow, or lacking in humour, or snobbish, but because nothing had ever happened to cause him to examine his beliefs closely, that he might appreciate what they really were. One of these views was, that cultured people were of a class in themselves, and could not and should not mix with other classes. Mrs. de Laney entertained a horror of vulgarity. So deep-rooted was this horror that a remote taint of it was sufficient to thrust forever outside the pale of her approbation any unfortunate who exhibited it. She preferred stupidity to common sense, when the former was allied with good form, and the latter only with plain kindliness. This was partly instinct and partly the result of cultivation. She would shrink, with uncontrollable disgust, from any of the lower classes with whom she came unavoidably in contact. A slight breach of the conventions earned her distrust of one of her own caste. As this personal idiosyncrasy fell in line with the de Laney pride, it was approved by the head of the family. Under encouragement it became almost a monomania.

Bennington pictured to himself only too vividly the effect of the Lawtons on this lady's aristocratic prejudices. He knew, only too well, that Bill Lawton's table manners would not be allowed even in her kitchen. He could imagine Mrs. Lawton's fatuous conversation in the de Laney's drawing-room, or Maude Eliza's dressed-up self-consciousness. The experience of having the three Westerners to dinner just once would, Bennington knew, drive his lady mother to the verge of nervous prostration—he remembered his father's one and only experience in bringing business connections home to lunch—; his imagination failed to picture the effect of her having to endure them as actual members of the family! As if this were not bad enough, his restless fancy carried him a step farther. He perceived the agonies of shame and mortification, real even though they were conventional, she would have to endure in the face of society. That the de Laneys, social leaders, rigid in respectability, should be forced to the humiliation of acknowledging a misalliance, should be forced to the added humiliation of confessing that this marriage was not only with a family of inferior social standing, but with one actually unlettered and vulgar! Bennington knew only too well the temper of his mother—and of society.

It would not be difficult to expand these doubts, to amplify these reasons, and even to adduce others which occurred to the unhappy young man as he climbed the hill. But enough has been said. Surely the reader, no matter how removed in sympathy from that line of argument, must be able now at least to sympathize, to perceive that Bennington de Laney had some reason for thought, some excuse for the tardiness of his steps as they carried him to a meeting with the girl he loved.

For he did love her, perhaps the more tenderly that doubts must, perforce, arise. All these considerations affected not at all his thought of her. But now, for the first time, Bennington de Laney was weighing the relative claims of duty and happiness. His happiness depended upon his love. That his duty to his race, his parents, his caste had some reality in fact, and a very solid reality in his own estimation, the author hopes he has shown. If not, several pages have been written in vain.

The conflict in his mind had carried him to the Rock. Here, as he expected, he found Mary already arrived. He ascended to the little plateau and dropped wearily to the moss. His face had gone very white in the last quarter of an hour.

"You see now why I asked you to come to-day," she said without preliminary. "Now you have seen them, and there is nothing more to conceal."

"I know, I know," he replied dully. "I am trying to think it out. I can't see it yet."

They took entirely for granted that each knew the subject of the other's thoughts. The girl seemed much the more self-possessed of the two.

"We may as well understand each other," she said quietly, without emotion. "You have told me a certain thing, and have asked me for a certain answer. I could not give it to you before without deceiving you. Now the answer depends on you. I have deceived you in a way," she went on more earnestly, "but I did not mean to. I did not realize the difference, truly I didn't, until I saw the girl on the train. Then I knew the difference between her and me, and between her's and mine. And when you turned away, I saw that you were her kind, and I saw, too, that you ought to know everything there was about me. Then you spoke."

"I meant what I said, too," he interrupted. "You must believe that, Mary, whatever comes."

"I was sorry you did," she went on, as though she had not heard him. Then with just a touch of impatience tingeing the even calm of her voice, "Oh, why will men insist on saying those things!" she cried. "The way to win a girl is not thus. He should see her often, without speaking of love, being everything to her, until at last she finds she can not live without him."

"Have I been that to you, Mary? Has it come to that with me?" he asked wistfully.

"Heaven help me, I am afraid it has!" she cried, burying her face in her hands.

A great gladness leaped up into his face, and died as the blaze of a fire leaps up and expires.

"That makes it easier—and harder," he said. "It is bad enough as it is. I don't know how I can make you understand, dear."

"I understand more than you think," she replied, becoming calm again, and letting her hands fall into her lap. "I am going to speak quite plainly. You love me, Ben—ah, don't I know it!" she cried, with a sudden burst of passion. "I have seen it in your eyes these many days. I have heard it in your voice. I have felt it welling out from your great heart. It has been sweet to me—so sweet! You can not know, no man ever could know, how that love of yours has filled my soul and my heart until there was room for nothing else in the whole wide world!"

"You love me!" he said wonderingly.

"If I had not known that, do you think I would have endured a moment's hesitation after you had seen the objectionable features of my life? Do you think that if I had the slightest doubts of your love, I could now understand why you hesitate? But I do, and I honour you for it."

"You love me!" he repeated.

"Yes, yes, Ben dear, I do love you. I love you as I never thought to be permitted to love. Do you want to know what I did that second day on the Rock—the day you first showed me what you really were? The day you told me of your old home and the great tree? It was all so peaceful, and tender, and comforting, so sweet and pure, that it rested me. I felt, here is a man at last who could not misunderstand me, could not be abrupt, and harsh, and cruel. I said to myself, 'He is not perfect nor does he expect perfection.' I shut my eyes, and then something choked me, and the tears came. I cried out loud, 'Oh, to be what I was, to give again what I have not! O God, give me back my heart as it once was, and let me love!' Yes, Ben dear, I said 'love.' And then I was not happy any more all day. But God answered that prayer, Ben dear, and we do love one another now, and that is why we can look at things together, and see what is best for us both."

"You love me!" he exclaimed for the third time.

"And now, dear, we must talk plainly and calmly. You have seen what my family is."

"I don't know, Mary, that I can make you understand at all," began Bennington helplessly. "I can't express it even to myself. Our people are so different. My training has been so different. All this sort of thing means so much to us, and so little to you."

"I know exactly," she interrupted. "I have read, and I have lived East. I can appreciate just how it is. See if I can not read your thoughts. My family is uneducated. If it becomes your family, your own parents will be more than grieved, and your friends will have little to do with you. You have also duties toward your family, as a family. Is that it?"

"Yes, that is it," answered he, "but there are so many things it does not say. It seems to me it has come to be a horrible dilemma with me. If I do what I am afraid is my duty to my family and my people, I will be unhappy without you forever. And if I follow my heart, then it seems to me I will wrong myself, and will be unhappy that way. It seems a choice of just in what manner I will be miserable!" he ended with a ghastly laugh.

"And which is the most worth while?" she asked in a still voice.

"I don't know, I don't know!" he cried miserably. "I must think."

He looked out straight ahead of him for some time. "Whichever way I decide," he said after a little, "I want you to know this, Mary: I love you, and I always will love you, and the fact that I choose my duty, if I do, is only that if I did not, I would not consider myself worthy even to look at you." A silence fell on them again.

"I can not live West," said he again, as though he had been arguing this point in his mind and had just reached the conclusion of it. "My life is East; I never knew it until now." He hesitated. "Would you—that is, could you—I mean, would your family have to live East too?"

She caught his meaning and drew herself up, with a little pride in the movement.

"Wherever I go, whatever I do, my people must be free to go or do. You have your duty to your family. I have my duty to mine!"

He bowed his head quietly in assent. She looked at the struggle depicted in the lines of his face with eyes in which, strangely enough, was much pity, but no unhappiness or doubt. Could it be that she was so sure of the result?

At last he raised his head slowly and turned to her with an air of decision.

"Mary——" he began.

At that moment there became audible a sudden rattle of stones below the Rock, and at the same instant a harsh voice broke in rudely upon their conversation.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE CLAIM JUMPERS

Bennington instinctively put his finger on his lips to enjoin silence, and peered cautiously over the edge of the dike. Perhaps he was glad that this diversion had occurred to postpone even for a short time the announcement of a decision it had cost him so much to make. Perhaps he recognised the voice.

Three men were clambering a trifle laboriously over the broken rocks at the foot of the dike, swearing a little at their unstable footing, but all apparently much in earnest in their conversation. Even as Bennington looked they came to a halt, and then sank down each on a convenient rock, talking interestedly. One was Old Mizzou, one was the man Arthur, the third was a stranger whom Bennington had never seen.

The latter had hardly the air of the country.

He was a dapper little man dressed in a dark gray bob-tailed cutaway, and a brown derby hat, which was pushed far back on his head. His face, however, was keen and alert and brown, all of which characteristics indicated an active Western life at no very remote day. The words which had so powerfully arrested Bennington de Laney's attention were delivered by Old Mizzou to this stranger.

"Thar!" the old man had said, "ain't that Crazy Hoss Lode 'bout as good-lookin' a lead as they make 'em?"

"So, so; so, so;" replied the man in the derby in a high voice. "Your vein is a fissure vein all right enough, and you've got a good wide lead. If it holds up in quality, I don't know but what you're right."

"I shows you them assays of McPherson's, don't I?" argued Mizzou, "an' any quartz in this kentry that assays twenty-four dollars ain't no ways cheap."

This speech was so significantly in line with Bennington's surmise that he caught his breath and drew back cautiously out of sight, but still in such a position that he could hear plainly every word uttered by the group below. The girl was watching him with bright, interested eyes.

"Listen carefully!" he whispered, bringing his mouth close to her ear. "I think there's some sort of plot here."

She nodded ready comprehension, and they settled themselves to hear the following conversation:

"I saw the assay," replied the stranger's voice to Mizzou's last statement, "but who's this McPherson? How do I know the assays are all right?"

"Why, he's that thar professer at th' School of Mines," expostulated Mizzou.

"Oh, yes!" cried the stranger, as though suddenly enlightened. "If those are his assays, they're all right. Let's see them again."

There followed a rustling of papers.

"Well, I've looked over your layout," went on the stranger after a moment, "and pretty thoroughly in the last few days. I know what you've got here. Now what's your proposition?"

There was a pause.

"I knows you a good while, Slayton——" began Mizzou, but was interrupted almost immediately by a third voice, that of Arthur. "The point is this," said the latter sharply, "Davidson here is in a position to give you possession of this group o' claims, but he ain't in a position to appear in th' transaction. How are you goin' to purtect him an' me so we gets something out of it?"

"Wait a minute," put in the stranger, "I want to ask a few questions myself. These claims belong to the Holy Smoke Company now, don't they?"

"Well, that's the idea."

"Are either of you the agent of that Company?"

"Not directly, perhaps."

"Are you indirectly?"

"Seems to me you haven't got any call t' look into that, if we guarantee t' give you good title."

"How do I know you can give me good title?"

"Ain't I tellin' you so?"

"Yes, but why should I believe you?"

"You shouldn't, unless you've got sense enough to see that we ain't gettin' you 'way up here, an' we ain't living round these parts a couple of years on a busted proposition."

The stranger evidently debated this.

"How would it be if you took equal shares with me on the claims, your shares to be paid from the earnings? That would be fair all round. You would get nothing unless the title was good. I would risk no more than you did," he suggested.

"Isn't I tellin' yo' I don't appear a tall in this yere transaction?" objected Mizzou.

The stranger laughed a little.

"I can see through a millstone," he said. "Why don't you old turtlebacks come out of your shells and play square? You've got some shady game on here that you're working underhand. Spin your yarn and I'll tell you what I think of it."

"How do I know you don't leave us out a'ter we tells you," objected Mizzou, returning to his original idea.

"You don't!" answered the stranger impatiently, "you don't! But it seems to me if you expect to get anything out of a shady transaction, you've got to risk something."

"That's right," put in Arthur, "that's right! 'Nuff said! Now, Slayton, we'll agree to git you full legal control of these yere claims if you'll develop them at your expense, an' gin Davidson and me a third interest between us fer our influence. That's our proposition, an' that goes. If you don't play squar', I knows how t' make ye."

"Spin your yarn," repeated the stranger quietly. "I'll agree to give you and Davidson a third interest, provided I take hold of the thing at all."

"An' Jack Slayton," put in Mizzou threateningly, "if you don't play us squar', I swar I'll shoot ye like a dog!"

"Oh, stow that, Davidson," rejoined the stranger in an irritated voice; "that rot don't do any good. I know you, and you know me. I never went back on a game yet, and you know it."

"I does know it, Jack!" came up Davidson's voice repentantly, "but this is a big deal, an' y' can't be too careful!"

"All right, all right," the stranger responded "Now tell us your scheme. How can you get hold of the property?"

"By jumping the claims," replied Arthur calmly. There ensued a short pause. Then:

"Don't be a fool," exclaimed Slayton with contempt; "this is no hold-up country. You can't drive a man off his property with a gun."

"I knows that. These claims can be 'jumped' quiet and legal."

"How?"

"They ain't be'n a stroke of assessment work done on 'em since we came. Th' Company's title's gone long ago. They lost their job last January. Them claims is open to any one who cares to have 'em."

The stranger uttered a long whistle. Old Mizzou chuckled cunningly. "I has charge of them claims from th' time they quits work on 'em 'till now. They ain't be'n a pick raised on 'em. Anybody could a-jumped 'em any time since las' January."

"But how about the Company?" asked Slayton. "How did you fool them?"

"Oh, I sends 'em bills fer work reg'lar enough! And I didn't throw away th' money neither!"

"Yes, that'd be easy enough. But how about the people around here? Why haven't they jumped the claims long ago?"

"Wall, I argues about this a-way. These yere gents sees I has charge, an' they says to themselves, 'Ole Davidson takes care of them assessment works all right,' an' so they never thinks it's worth while t' see whether it is done or not."

"You trusted to their thinking you were performing your duties?"

"Thet's it."

"Well, it was a pretty big risk!"

"Ev'rything t' gain an' nothin' t' lose," quoted Old Mizzou comfortably.

"How about this new man the Company has out here—de Laney? Is he in this deal too?"

"Oh, him!" said Davidson with vast contempt. "He don' know enough t' dodge a brick! I tells him th' assessment work is all done. He believes it, an' never looks t' see. I gets him fooled so easy it's shore funny."

"Hold on!" put in Slayton sharply. "I'm not so sure you aren't liable there somewhere. Of course your failure to do the assessment work while you were alone here was negligence, but that is all. The Company could fire you for failing to do your duty, but they couldn't prove any fraud against you. But when this de Laney came along it changed things."

"How is that?"

"Well, you told him the assessment work had been done, in so many words, didn't you? The Company can prove that you were using your official information to deceive him for the purposes of fraud. In other words, you were an officer of the Company, and you deceived another officer in your official capacity. I don't know but you'd be liable to a criminal action."

"Not on your tin-type," said Old Mizzou with confidence.

"Have you looked it up?"

"I does better than that. At that point I shore becomes subtle. I resigns from th' Company! A'ter that I talks assessment work. I tells him advice, jest as a friend. If he believes th' same, an' it ain't so, why thet's unfort'nit, but they can't do anythin' t' me. I'm jest an outsider. He is responsible to th' Company, an' if he wants information, he ought to go to th' books, and not to frien's who may deceive him."

"Davidson, you're a genius!" exclaimed the stranger heartily.

"I tells you I becomes subtle," acknowledged the old man with just pride. "But now you sees it ain't delikit that my name appears in th' case a tall. Folks is so suspicious these yere days, that if I has a share, and Arthur yere has a share, they says p'rhaps we has this yere scheme in view right along. But if Slayton gets them lapsed claims by hisself, Slayton bein' a stranger, they thinks how fortinit that Slayton is t' git onto it, and they puts pore Ole Mizzou down as becomin' fergitful in his old age."

The stranger laughed.

"It's easy," he remarked. "We get them for nothing, and you can bet your sweet life I'll push 'em through for all there is in it. Why, boys, you're rich! You won't have anything more to do the rest of your mortal days, unless you want to."

"I ain't seekin' no manual employment," observed Mizzou.

"I'm willin' to quit work," agreed Arthur.

"Well, you'll have a chance. Now we better hustle this thing through lively. We've got to make our discoveries on the quiet so no one will get on to us."

"It ain't goin' t' take us long t' tack up them notices, now 't we've agreed. We kin do th' most on it this evenin'. Jest lay low, that's all."

"Ain't de Laney going to get onto us sasshaying off with a lot of notices?"

"If he does," remarked Old Mizzou grimly, "I knows a dark hole whar we retires that young man for th' day! If it comes t' that, though, you got t' tend to it, Slayton. I ain't showin' in this deal y' know."

The stranger laughed unpleasantly.

"You show me the hole and I'll take care of Mr. man," he agreed. He laughed again. "By the way, it strikes me that fellow's going to run up against a good deal of tribulation before he gets through."

"Wall, thet thar Comp'ny ain't goin' to raise his pay when they finds it out," agreed Mizzou. "Thet Bishop, he gets tolerable anxious 'bout them assessment works now, and writes frequent. I got a whole bunch of his letters up t' camp that I keeps for th' good of his health. Ain't no wise healthy t' worry 'bout business, you know."

"Wonder th' little idiot didn't miss his mail," growled Arthur.

"Oh, I coaxes him on with th' letters from his mammy and pappy. They's harmless enough."

The three men fell into a discussion of various specimens of quartz which they took from their pockets, and, after what seemed to be an interminable time, arose and moved slowly down the hill.

The girl looked at her companion with wide-open eyes. "Ben!" she gasped, "what have you done?"

"Made a fool of myself," he responded curtly.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know."

He knit his brows deeply. She cast about for an expedient.

"I wish I knew more about mining!" she cried. "I know there is some way to get legal possession of a claim by patenting it, but I don't know how you do it."

He did not reply.

"There must be some way out of this," she went on, all alert. "They haven't done anything yet. Why don't you go down to camp and inquire?"

"Every man would be in the hills in less than an hour. I couldn't trust them," he replied brusquely.

"Oh, I know!" she cried with relief. "You must hunt up Jim. He knows all about those things, and you could rely on him."

"Jim? What Jim?"

"Jim Fay. Oh, that's just it! Run, Ben; go at once; don't wait a minute!"

"I want nothing whatever to do with that man," he said deliberately. "He has insulted me at every opportunity. He has treated me in a manner that was even more than insulting every time we have met. If I were dying, and he had but to turn his head toward me to save me, I would not ask him to do so!"

"Oh, don't be foolish, Ben!" cried she, wringing her hands in despair. "Don't let your pride stand in your way! Do you not realize the disgrace this will be to you—to lose all these rich claims just by carelessness? Do you realize that it means something to me, for I have been the reason of that carelessness. I know it! Just this once, forget all he has done to you. You can trust him. Don't be afraid of that. Tell him that I sent you, if you don't want to trust him on your own account——" she broke off. "Where are you going?" she asked anxiously.

"To do something," he answered, shutting his teeth together with a snap.

"Will you see Jim?" she begged, following him to the edge of the Rock as he swung himself down the tree.

"No!" he said, without looking back.

After he disappeared—in the direction of the Holy Smoke camp, as she noticed—she descended rapidly to the ground and hurried, sobbing excitedly, away toward Spanish Gulch. She was all alive with distress. She had never realized until the moment of his failure how much she had loved this man. Near the village she paused, bathed her eyes in the brook, and, assuming an air of deliberation and calmness, began making inquiries as to the whereabouts of Jim Fay.



CHAPTER XIX

BENNINGTON PROVES GAME

Bennington de Laney sat on the pile of rocks at the entrance to the Holy Smoke shaft. Across his knees lay the thirty-calibre rifle. His face was very white and set. Perhaps he was thinking of his return to New York in disgrace, of his interview with Bishop, of his inevitable meeting with a multitude of friends, who would read in the daily papers the accounts of his incompetence—criminal incompetence, they would call it. The shadows were beginning to lengthen across the slope of the hill. Up the gulch cow bells tinkled, up the hill birds sang, and through the little hollows twilight flowed like a vapour. The wild roses on the hillside were blooming—late in this high altitude. The pines were singing their endless song. But Bennington de Laney was looking upon none of these softer beauties of the Hills. Rather he watched intently the lower gulch with its flood-wracked, water-twisted skeleton laid bare. Could it be that in the destruction there figured forth he caught the symbol of his own condition? That the dreary gloom of that ruin typified the chaos of sombre thoughts that occupied his own remorseful mind? If so, the fancy must have absorbed him. The moments slipped by one by one, the shadows grew longer, the bird songs louder, and still the figure with the rifle sat motionless, his face white and still, watching the lower gulch.

Or could it be that Bennington de Laney waited for some one, and that therefore his gaze was so fixed? It would seem so. For when the beat of hoofs became audible, the white face quickened into alertness, and the motionless figure stirred somewhat.

The rider came in sight, rising and falling in a steady, unhesitating lope. He swung rapidly to the left, and ascended the knoll. Opposite the shaft of the Holy Smoke lode he reined in his bronco and dismounted. The rider was Jim Fay.

Bennington de Laney did not move. He looked up at the newcomer with dull resignation. "He takes it hard, poor fellow!" thought Fay.

"Well, what's to be done?" asked the Easterner in a strained voice. "I suppose you know all about it, or you wouldn't be here."

"Yes, I know all about it," said Fay gently. "You mustn't take it so hard. Perhaps we can do something. We'll be able to save one or two claims, any way, if we're quick about it."

"I've heard something about patenting claims," went on de Laney in the same strange, dull tones; "could that be done?"

"No. You have to do five hundred dollars' worth of work, and advertise for sixty days. There isn't time."

"That settles it. I don't know what we can do then."

"Well, that depends. I've come to help do something. We've got to get an everlasting hustle on us, that's all; and I'm afraid we are beginning a little behindhand in the race. You ought to have hunted me up at once."

"I don't see what there is to do," repeated Bennington thickly.

"Don't you? The assessment work hasn't been done—that's the idea, isn't it?—and so the claims have reverted to the Government. They are therefore open to location, as in the beginning, and that is just what Davidson and that crowd are going to do to them. Well, they're just as much open to us. We'll just jump our own claims!"

"What!" cried the Easterner, excited.

"Well, relocate them ourselves, if that suits you better."

Bennington's dull eyes began to light up.

"So get a move on you," went on Fay; "hustle out some paper so we can make location notices. Under the terms of a relocation, we can use the old stakes and 'discovery,' so all we have to do is to tack up a new notice all round. That's the trouble. That gang's got their notices all written, and I'm afraid they've got ahead of us. Come on!"

Bennington, who had up to this time remained seated on the pile of stones, seemed filled with a new and great excitement. He tottered to his feet, throwing his hands aloft.

"Thank God! Thank God!" he cried, catching his breath convulsively.

Fay turned to look at him curiously. "We aren't that much out of the woods," he remarked; "the other gang'll get in their work, don't you fret."

"They never will, they never will!" cried the Easterner exultantly. "They can't. We'll locate 'em all!" The tears welled over his eyes and ran down his cheeks.

"What do you mean?" asked Fay, beginning to fear the excitement had unsettled his companion's wits.

"Because they're there!" cried Bennington, pointing to the mouth of the shaft near which he had been sitting. "Davidson, Slayton, Arthur—they're all there, and they can't get away! I didn't know what else to do. I had to do something!"

Fay cast an understanding glance at the young man's rifle, and sprang to the entrance of the shaft. As though in direct corroboration of his speech, Fay could perceive, just emerging from the shadow, the sinister figure of the man Arthur creeping cautiously up the ladder, evidently encouraged to an attempt to escape by the sound of the conversation above. The Westerner snatched his pistol from his holster and presented it down the shaft.

"Kindly return!" he commanded in a soft voice. The upward motion of the dim figure ceased, and in a moment it had faded from view in the descent. Fay waited a moment. "In five minutes," he announced in louder tones, "I'm going to let loose this six-shooter down that shaft. I should advise you gentlemen to retire to the tunnel." He peered down again intently. A sudden clatter and thud behind him startled him. He looked around. Bennington had fallen at full length across the stones, and his rifle, falling, had clashed against the broken ore.

Fay, with a slight shrug of contempt at such womanish weakness, ran to his assistance. He straightened the Easterner out and placed his folded coat under his head. "He'll come around in a minute," he muttered. He glanced toward the gulch and then back to the shaft. "Can't leave that lay-out," he went on. He bent over the prostrate figure and began to loosen the band of his shirt. Something about the boy's clothing attracted his attention, so, drawing his knife, he deftly and gently ripped away the coat and shirt. Then he arose softly to his feet and bared his head.

"I apologize to you," said he, addressing the recumbent form; "you are game."

In the fleshy part of the naked shoulder was a small round hole, clotted and smeared with blood.

Jim Fay stooped and examined the wound closely. The bullet had entered near the point of the shoulder, but a little below, so that it had merely cut a secant through the curve of the muscle. If it had struck a quarter of an inch to the left it would have gouged a furrow; a quarter of an inch beyond that would have caused it to miss entirely. Fay saw that the hurt itself was slight, and that the Easterner had fainted more because of loss of blood than from the shock. This determined to his satisfaction, he moved quickly to the mouth of the shaft. "Way below!" he cried in a sharp voice, and discharged his revolver twice down the opening. Then he stole noiselessly away, and ran at speed to the kitchen of the shack, whence he immediately returned with a pail of water and a number of towels. He set these down, and again peered down the shaft. "Way below!" he repeated, and dropped down a sizable chunk of ore. Apparently satisfied that the prisoners were well warned, he gave his whole attention to his patient.

He washed the wound carefully. Then he made a compress of one of the towels, and bound it with the other two. Looking up, he discovered Bennington watching him intently.

"It's all right!" he assured the latter in answer to the question in his eyes. "Nothing but a scratch. Lie still a minute till I get this fastened, and you can sit up and watch the rat hole while I get you some clothes."

In another moment or so the young man was propped up against an empty ore "bucket," his shoulder bound, and his hand slung comfortably in a sling from his neck.

"There you are," said Jim cheerily. "Now you take my six-shooter and watch that aggregation till I get back. They won't come out any, but you may as well be sure."

He handed Bennington his revolver, and moved off in the direction of the cabin, whistling cheerfully. The young man looked after him thoughtfully. Nothing could have been more considerate than the Westerner's manner, nothing could have been kinder than his prompt action—Bennington saw that his pony, now cropping the brush near at hand, was black with sweat—nothing could have been more straightforward than his assistance in the matter of the claims. And yet Bennington de Laney was not satisfied. He felt he owed the sudden change of front to a word spoken in his behalf by the girl. This was a strange influence she possessed, thus to alter a man's attitude entirely by the mere voicing of a wish.

The Westerner returned carrying a loose shirt and a coat, which he drew entire over the injured shoulder, which left one sleeve empty.

"I guess that fixes you," said he with satisfaction.

"Look here," put in Bennington suddenly, "you've been mighty good to me in all this. If you hadn't come along as you did, these fellows would have nabbed me sooner or later, and probably I'd have lost the claims any way. I feel I owe you a lot. But I want you to know before you go any further that that don't square us. You've had it in for me ever since I came out here, and you've made it mighty unpleasant for me. I can't forget that all at once. I want to tell you plainly that, although I am grateful enough, I know just why you have done all this. It is because she asked you to. And knowing that, I can't accept what you do for me as from a friend, for I don't feel friendly toward you in the least." His face flushed painfully. "I'm not trying to insult you or be boorish," he said; "I just want you to understand how I feel about it. And now that you know, I suppose you'd better let the matter go, although I'm much obliged to you for fixing me up."

He glanced at his shoulder.

Fay listened to this speech quietly and with patience. "What do you intend to do?" he asked, when the other had quite finished.

"I don't know yet. If you'll say nothing down below—and I'm sure you will not—I'll contrive some way of keeping this procession down the hole, and of feeding them, and then I'll relocate the claims myself."

"With one arm?"

"Yes, with one arm!" cried Bennington fiercely; "with no arms at all, if need be!" he broke off suddenly, with the New Yorker's ingrained instinct of repression. "I beg your pardon. I mean I'll do as well as I can, of course."

"How about the woman—Arthur's wife? She'll give you trouble."

"She has locked herself in her cabin already. I will assist her to continue the imprisonment."

Fay laughed outright. "And you expect, with one arm and wounded, to feed four people, keep them in confinement, and at the same time to relocate eighteen claims lying scattered all over the hills! Well, you're optimistic, to say the least."

"I'll do the best I can," repeated Bennington doggedly.

"And you won't ask help of a friend ready to give it?"

"Not as a friend."

"Well," Fay chuckled, apparently not displeased, "you're an obstinate young man, or rather a pig-headed young man, but I don't know as that counts against you. I'll help you out, anyway—if not as a friend, then as an enemy. You see, I have my marching orders from someone else, and you haven't anything to do with it."

Bennington bowed coldly, but his immense relief flickered into his face in spite of himself. "What should we do first?" he asked formally.

"Sit here and wait for the kids," responded Jim.

"Who are the kids?"

"Friends of mine—trustworthy."

Jim rearranged Bennington's coverings and lit a pipe. "Tell us about it," said he.

"There isn't much to tell. I knew I had to do something, so I just held them up and made them get down the shaft. I didn't know what I was going to do next, but I was glad to have them out of the way to get time to think."

"Who plugged you?" inquired Fay, motioning with the mouthpiece of his pipe toward the wounded shoulder.

"That was Arthur. He had a little gun in his coat pocket and he shot from inside the pocket. I'd made them drop all the guns they had, I thought."

"Did you take a crack at him then?" asked Fay, interested.

"Oh, no. I just covered him and made him shell out. As a matter of fact I don't believe any one of them knew I was hit."

Fay smoked on in silence, glancing from time to time with satisfaction at the youth opposite. During the passage of these events the day had not far advanced. The shadow of Harney had not yet reached out to the edge of the hills.

"Hullo! The kids!" said Fay suddenly.

Two pedestrians emerged from the lower gulch and bent their steps toward the camp. As they came nearer, Bennington, with a gasp of surprise, recognised the Leslies.

The sprightly youths were dressed just alike, in knickerbockers and Norfolk jackets of dark brown plaid, and small college caps to match—an outfit which Bennington had always believed would attract too vivid attention in this country. As they came nearer he saw that the jackets were fitted with pockets of great size. In the pockets were sketch books and bulging articles. They caught sight of the two figures on the ore heap simultaneously.

"Behold our attentive host!" cried Jeems. "He is now in the act of receiving us with all honour!"

Bennington's face fairly shone with pleasure at the encounter. "Hullo fellows! Hullo there!" he cried out delightedly again and again, and rose slowly to his feet. This disclosed the fact of his injury, and the brothers ran forward, with real sympathy and concern expressed on their lively countenances. There ensued a rapid fire of questions and answers. The Leslies proved to be already familiar with the details of the attempt to jump the claims, and understood at once Fay's brief account of the present situation, over which they rejoiced in the well-known Leslie fashion. They exploded in genuine admiration of Bennington's adventure, and praised that young man enthusiastically. Bennington could feel, even before this, that he stood on a different footing than formerly with these self-reliant young men. They treated him as familiarly as ever, but with a new respect. The truth is, their astuteness in reading character, which is as essentially an attribute of the artistic temperament in black and white as in words and phrases, had shown them already that their old acquaintance had grown from boy to man since last they had met. They knew this even before they learned of its manifestation. So astounding was the change that they gave it credit, perhaps, for being more thorough than it was. After the situation had been made plain, Bennington reverted to the unexpectedness of their appearance.

"But you haven't told me yet how you happen to be here," he suggested. "I'd as soon have expected to see Ethel Henry coming up the gulch!"

"Didn't you get our letters?" cried Bert in astonishment.

"No, I haven't received any letters. Did you write?"

"Did we write! Well, I should think so! We wrote three times, telling you we were coming and when to expect us. Jeems and I wondered why you didn't meet us. That explains it. Seems funny you didn't get any of those letters!"

"No, I don't believe it is so funny after all," responded Bennington, who had been thinking it over. "I remember now that Davidson told the others he had been intercepting my letters from the Company, and I suppose he got yours too."

"That's it, of course. I'll have to interview that Davidson later. Well, we used to train around here off and on, as I told you once, and this year Jeems and I thought we'd do our summer sketching here, and sort of revive old times. So we packed up and came."

"I'm mighty glad you came, anyway," replied Bennington fervently.

"So'm I. We're just in time to help foil the villain. As foilers Jeems and I are an artistic success. We have studied foiling under the best masters in the Bowery and Sixth Avenue theatres."

"Where's Bill?" asked Jim suddenly.

"Will be around in the morning. You're to report progress at once. Didn't dare to come up until after the row. Dreadful anxious though. Would have come if Jeems and I hadn't forbidden it."

Bennington wondered vaguely who Bill might be, but he was beginning to feel a little tired from the excitement and his wound, so he said nothing.

"The next thing is grub," remarked Fay, rising and gathering his pony's reins. "I'll mosey up to the shack and see about supper. You fellows can sit around and talk until I get organized."

He turned to move away, leading his horse.

"Hold on a minute, Jim," called Bert. "You might lend me your bronc, and I'll lope down and set Bill's mind easy. It won't take long."

"Good scheme!" approved Jim heartily. "That's thoughtful of you, Bertie!"

He dropped the reins where he stood, and the pony, with the usual well-trained Western docility, hung his head and halted. Bert arose and looked down the shaft.

"Supper will be served shortly, gentlemen," he observed suavely. He turned toward the pony.

"Bert," called Bennington in a different voice, "did you say you were going down the gulch?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to do something for me?"

"Why, surely. What is it?"

"Would you just as soon stop at the Lawtons' and tell Miss Lawton for me that it's all right! You'll find the Lawton house——"

"Yes, I know where the Lawton house is," interrupted Bert, "but Miss Lawton, you said?"

"Don't you remember, Bert," put in James, "there is a kid there—Maude, or something of that sort?"

"No, no, not Maude," persisted Bennington, still more bashfully. "I mean Miss Lawton, the young lady."

He felt that both the youths were looking keenly at him with dawning wonder and delight. "Hold on, Bert," interposed James, as the other was about to exclaim, "do you mean, Ben, the one you've been giving such a rush for the last two months?"

"Miss Lawton and I are very good friends," replied Bennington with dignity, wondering whence James had his information.

Bert drew in his breath sharply, and opened his mouth to speak.

"Hold on, Bert," interposed James again. "There are possibilities in this. Don't destroy artistic development by undue haste. What did you call the young lady, Ben?"

"Miss Lawton, of course!"

"Daughter of Bill Lawton?"

"Why, yes."

"Oh, my eye!" ejaculated James.

"And you have eyes in your head!" he cried after a moment. "You have ears in your head! Blamed if you haven't everything in your head but brains! She's a good one! I didn't appreciate the subtlety of that woman before. Ben, you everlasting idiot, do you mean to tell me that you've seen that girl every day for the last two months, and don't know yet that she's too good to belong to Bill Lawton?"

Bert began to laugh hysterically.

"What do you mean!" cried Bennington.

"What I say. She isn't Bill Lawton's daughter. Her name isn't Lawton at all. O glory! He don't even know her name!" James in his turn went into a fit of laughing. In uncontrollable excitement Bennington seized him with his sound hand.

"What is it? Tell me! What is her name, then?"

"O Lord! Don't squeeze so! I'll tell you! Letup!"

James dashed the back of his hand across his eyes.

"What is her name?" repeated Bennington fiercely.

"Wilhelmina Fay. We call her Bill for short."

"And Jim Fay?"

"Is her brother."

"And the Lawtons?"

"They board there."

Across Bennington's mind flashed vaguely a suspicion that turned him faint with mortification.

"Who is this Jim Fay?" he asked.

"He's Jim Fay—James Leicester Fay, of Boston."

"Not——"

"Yes, exactly. The Boston Fays."

Bert swung himself into the saddle. "Better not say anything to Bill about the young 'un's shoulder," called after him the ever-thoughtful James.



CHAPTER XX

MASKS OFF

Now that it was all explained, it seemed to Bennington de Laney to be ridiculously simple. He wondered how he could have been so blind. For the moment, however, all other emotions were swallowed up in intense mortification over the density he had displayed, and the ridiculous light in which he must have appeared to all the actors in the comedy. His companion perceived this, and kindly hastened to relieve it.

"You're wondering how it all happened," said he, "but you don't want to ask about it. I'm going to tell you the story of your life. You see, Bert and I knew the Fays very well in Boston, and we knew also that they were out here in the Hills. That's what tickled us so when you said you were coming out to this very place. You know yourself, Ben, that you were pretty green when you were in New York—you must know it, because you have got over it so nicely since—and it struck us, after you talked so much about the 'Wild West,' that it would be a shame if you didn't get some of it. So we wrote Jim that you were coming, and to see to it that you had a time."

Jim chuckled a little. "From his letters, I guess you had it. He wrote about that horse he sprung on you, and the time they lynched you, and all the rest of it, and we thought we had done pretty well, especially since Jim wrote he thought you weren't half bad, and had come through in good shape. He wrote, too, that you had run against Bill, and that Bill was fooling you up in some way—way unspecified. He seemed to be a little afraid that Bill was trifling with your young affections—how is it Ben, anyway?—but he said that Bill was very haughty on the subject, and as he'd never been able to do anything with her before, he didn't believe he'd have much success if he should try now. I suggested that Bill might get in a little deep herself," went on James, watching his listener's face keenly, "but Bert seemed inclined to the opinion that any one as experienced as Bill was perfectly able to take care of herself anywhere. She's a mighty fine girl, Ben, old man," suddenly concluded this startling youth, holding out his hand, "and I wish you every success in the world in getting her!"

"Thank you, Jeems," replied Bennington simply, without attempting to deny the state of affairs. "I'm sure I'm glad of your good wishes, but I'm afraid I haven't any show now." He sighed deeply.

"I'll give an opinion on that after I see Bill again," observed the artist sagely.

"It always struck me as being queer that two of the most refined people about here should happen to be living in the same house," commented Bennington, only just aware that it had so struck him.

"Did it, indeed?" said Leslie drolly. "You're just bursting with sagacity now, aren't you? And your Sherlock-Holmes intellect is seething with conjecture. The lover's soul is far above the sordid earthly considerations which interest us ordinary mortals, but I'll bet a hat you are wondering how it comes that a Boston girl is out here without any more restraint on her actions than a careless brother who doesn't bother himself, and why she's out here at all, and a few things like that. 'Fess up."

"Well," acknowledged Bennington a trifle reluctantly, "of course it is a little out of the ordinary, but then it's all right, somehow, I'll swear."

"All right! Of course it's all right! They haven't any father or mother, you know, and they are independent of action, as you've no doubt noticed. Bill kept house for Jim for some time—and they used to keep a great house, I tell you," said James, smacking his lips in recollection. "Bert and I used to visit there a good deal. That's why they call me Jeems—to distinguish me from Jim. Then Jim got tired of doing nothing—they possess everlasting rocks—you know their lamented dad was a sort of amateur Croesus—and he decided to monkey with mines. Bert and I were here one summer, so Bill and Jim just pulled up stakes and came along too. They have been here ever since. They're both true sports and like the life, and all that; and, besides, Jim has kept busy monkeying with mining speculation. They're the salt of the earth, that pair, if they do worry poor old Boston to death with their ways of doing things. That's one reason I like 'em so much. Society has fits over their doings, but it can't get along without them."

"The Fays are a pretty good family, aren't they?" inquired Bennington. He was irresistibly impelled to ask this question.

"Best going. Mayflower, William the Conqueror, and all that rot. You must know of the Boston Fays."

"I do. That is, I've heard of them; but I didn't know whether they were the same."

Jeems perceived that the topic interested the young fellow, so he descanted at length concerning the Fays, their belongings, and their doings. Time passed rapidly. Bennington was surprised to see Jim coming down to them through the afterglow of sunset announcing vociferously that the meal was at last prepared.

"I've fed the old lady," he announced, "and unlocked her. She doesn't know what's up anyway. She just sits there like a graven image, scared to death. She doesn't know a relocation from a telegraph pole. I told her to get a move on her and fix us up some bunks, and I guess she's at it now."

They consulted as to the best means of guarding the prisoners. It was finally agreed that Leslie should stand sentinel until the others had finished supper.

"I want to watch the effect of this light on the hills," he announced positively, "and I'm not hungry, and Jim ought to cool off before coming out into the air, and Ben's shoulder ought to be taken care of. Get along with ye!"

Bennington accompanied Jim to the meal very cheerfully. The facts as to the latter's persecutions remained the same, but in some way they did not hold the same proportions as heretofore. The mere item that Jim Fay was Mary's brother, instead of her lover, made all the difference in the world. He chattered in a lively fashion concerning the method of work to be adopted. Suddenly he pulled himself up short.

"I think I must beg your pardon," he said. "I heard about it all from Jim Leslie. I have been very green, and you were quite right. If you still want to do so, let's go into this together as friends."

"No pardon coming to me," responded Fay heartily. "I've been a little tough on you occasionally, that I'll admit, and if I've done too much, I'm sure I beg your pardon. I saw you had the right stuff in you that day when you stuck to the horse until you rode him, and I've always liked you first-rate since then. And I wouldn't worry about this last matter. You were green to the country, and were put down here without definite instructions. You trusted Davidson, of course, and got fooled in it; but then you just followed Bishop's lead in that. He'd been trusting Davidson before you got here, and if he hadn't trusted him right along, you can bet you'd have had your directions from A to Z. He was as much to blame as you were, and you'll find that he knows it."

"I'm afraid you can't make me feel any better about that," objected Bennington, shaking his head despondently.

"Well, you'll feel better after a time, and anyway there's no actual harm done."

At this moment Bert Leslie entered.

"Bill's tickled to death," he announced. "She says she's coming up first thing in the morning. She wanted to come right off and cook supper, but I wouldn't let her. She couldn't very well stay here all night, and it's pretty late now. What you got here? Pork? Coffee? Murphies?"

He sat down and began to eat hungrily. Jim arose to relieve the sentinel at the mouth of the shaft, at the same time advising de Laney to go to bed as soon as possible.

"You're tired," he said, "and need rest. Wet that compress well with Pond's Extract, and we'll dress it again in the morning."

In the kitchen he found the strange sombre woman sitting bolt upright in silence, her arms folded rigidly across her flat bosom. She looked straight in front of her, and rocked slowly to and fro on her chair.

"You mustn't worry, Mrs. Arthur," consoled Fay kindly, pausing for a moment. "There isn't going to be any trouble. It's just a little matter of mining law. We'll have to keep your husband locked up for a few days, but he won't be harmed."

The woman made no reply. Fay looked at her sharply again, and passed out.

"Jeems," he directed that individual at the mouth of the shaft, "go get your grub. Send the kid to bed right off, and then you and Bert come down here and we'll fix up these prairie dogs of ours down the hole."

Jeems and his brother therefore helped the wounded hero to bed, and left him to a much-needed slumber; after which they returned to the spot of light in the darkness which marked the glow of Fay's pipe. That capable individual issued directions. First of all they lowered, by means of a light cord, food and water to their prisoners. The latter maintained a sullen silence, and it was only by the lightening of the burden at the end of the line that those above knew their provisions had been appropriated. Then followed blankets. The Leslies were strongly in favour of as uncomfortable a confinement as possible, and so disapproved of blankets, but Fay insisted. After that the brothers manned the windlass and let Jim down in a bowline about twenty feet, while he detached and removed two lengths of the shaft ladder. This left no means of ascent, as the walls of the shaft were smoothly timbered; but, to make matters sure, they covered the mouth with inch thick boards on which they piled large chunks of ore.

"You don't suppose they'll smother?" suggested Bert.

"Not much! There's only three of them, and often men drilling will stay down ten or twelve hours at a time without using up the air."

"Sweet dreams, gentlemen!" called the irrepressible Jeems in farewell.

"There's one other thing," said Jim, "and then we can crawl in."

He approached the cabin in which Arthur and his wife were accustomed to sleep, and listened until he had satisfied himself that Mrs. Arthur was inside. Then he softly locked the door, the key of which he had appropriated immediately after supper, and propped shut the heavy wooden shutter of the window.

"No dramatic escapes in ours, thank you!" he muttered. He drew back and surveyed his work with satisfaction. "Come on, boys, let's turn in. To-morrow we slave."



CHAPTER XXI

THE LAND OF VISIONS

Although he had retired so early, and in so exhausted a condition, Bennington de Laney could not sleep. He had taken a slight fever, and the wound in his shoulder was stiff and painful. For hours on end he lay flat on his back, staring at the dim illuminations of the windows and listening to the faint out-of-door noises or the sharper borings of insects in the logs of the structure. His mind was not active. He lay in a semi-torpor, whose most vivid consciousness was that of mental discomfort and the interminability of time.

The events of the day rose up before him, but he seemed to loathe them merely because they had been of so active a character, and now he could not bear to have his brain teased even with their impalpable shadow.

Strangely enough, this altitude seemed to create a certain dead polarity between him and them. They lay sullenly outside his brain, repelled by this dead polarity, and he looked at them languidly, against the dim illumination of the window, with a dull joy that they could not come near him and enter the realm of his thoughts. All this was the fever.

In a little time these events became endowed with more palpable bodies which moved. The square of semilucent window faded into something indescribable, and that into something indescribable, and that into something else, still indescribable.

They moved swiftly, and things happened. He found himself suddenly in a long gallery, half in the dusk, half in the lamplight, pacing slowly back and forth, waiting for something, he knew not what. To him came a bustling motherly old woman with a maid's cap on, who said, "Sure, Master Ben, the moon is shining, and, let me tell ye, at the end of the hall is a balcony of iron, and Miss Mary will be glad you know that same." And at that he seemed to himself to be hunting for a coin with which to tip her. He discovered it turned to lead between his fingers, whereupon the old woman laughed shrilly and disappeared, and he found himself alone on the prairie at midnight.

His mind seemed to be filled with great thoughts which would make him famous. Over and over again he said to himself: "The rain pours and the people down below chuckle as they move about each under his little umbrella of self-conceit. They look up to the mountain, saying, 'The fool! Why looks he so high? He is lost in the mists up there, and he might be safe and dry with us.' But the mountain has over him the arch of the universe, and sleeps calmly in the sun of truth. Little recks he of the clouds below, and knows not at all the little self-satisfied fools who pity him," and he thought this was the sum of all wisdom, and that with it would come immortality.

Then a bell began to boom, a deep-toned bell, whose tolling was inexpressibly solemn, and poured into his heart a sadness too deep for sorrow. As though there dwelt an enchantment in the very sound itself, the dark prairies shifted like a scene, and in their stead he saw, in a cold gray twilight, a high doorway built of a cold gray stone, rough-hewed and heavy. Through its arch passed then a file of gray-cowled monks, their faces concealed. Each carried a torch, whose flickering, wavering light cast weird cowled figures on the gray stone, and in their midst was borne a bier, covered with white. And as the deep bell boomed on through all the vision, like a subtle thrilling presence, Bennington seemed to himself to stand, finger on lip, the eternal custodian of the Secret of it all—the secret that each of these cowled figures was a Man—a divine soul and a body, with ears, and eyes, and a brain; that he had thoughts, and his life that is and is to come was of these thoughts; that there beat hearts beneath that gray, and that their voices must not be heeded; that in the morning these wearied eyes awaited but the eve, and that the evening brought no hope for a new day; that these silent, awesome beings lived within the heavy stones alone with monotony, until the bell tolled, as now, and they were carried through the arched doorway into the night; and, above all, that to each there were sixty minutes in the hour, and twenty-four hours in the day, and years and years of these days. This was the Secret, and he was its custodian. None of the others knew of it; but its awfulness made him sad and stern. He checked the days, he numbered the hours, he counted the minutes rigorously lest one escape. One did escape, and he turned back to catch it, and pursued it far away from the stone doorway and the dull twilight, and even the sound of the bell, off into a land where there were many hills and valleys, among which the fugitive Minute hid elusively. And he pursued the Minute, calling upon it to come to him, and the name by which he called it was Mary. Then he saw that the square of the window had become yellow with the sun, and that through it he could hear plainly the voices of the Leslies talking in high tones.

His brain was very clear, more so than usual, and he not only received many impressions, and ordered them with ease and despatch, but his very senses seemed more than ordinarily acute. He could distinguish even by day, when the night stillness had withdrawn its favouring conditions, the borings of the sawdust insects in the logs of the cabin. Only he was very tired. His hands seemed a long distance away, as though it would require an extraordinary effort of the will to lift them. So he lay quiet and listened.

The conversation, of which he was the eavesdropper, was carried on by fits and starts. First a sentence would be delivered by one of the Leslies; then would ensue a pause as though for a reply, inaudible to any but the interlocutors themselves; then another sentence; and so on, like a man at a telephone. After a moment's puzzling over it, Bennington understood that Jim Leslie was talking to one of the prisoners down the shaft.

"You have the true sporting spirit, sir," cried the voice of Jeems. "I honour you for it. But so philosophical a resignation, while it inclines our souls to know more of you personally, nevertheless renders you much less interesting in such a juncture as the present. I would like to hear from Mr. Davidson."

Pause.

"That was a performance, Mr. Davidson, which I can not entirely commend. It is fluent, to be sure, but it lacks variety. A true artist would have interspersed those finer shades and gradations of meaning which go to express the numerous and clashing emotions which must necessarily agitate your venerable bosom. You surely mean more than damn. Damn is expressive and forceful, because capable of being enunciated at one explosive effort of the breath, but it is monotonous when too freely employed. To be sure, you might with some justice reply that you had qualified said adjective strongly—but the qualification was trite though blasphemous. And you limited it very nicely—but the limitation to myself is unjust, as it overlooks my brother's equitable claims to notice."

Pause.

"I beg pardon! Kindly repeat!"

Pause.

"Delicious! Mr. Davidson, you have redeemed yourself. Bertie, did you hear Mr. Davidson's last remark?"

"No!" replied another voice. "Couldn't be bothered. What was it?"

"Mr. Davidson, with a polished sarcasm that amounted to genius, advised me in his picturesque vernacular 't' set thet jaw of mine goin', and then go away an' leave it!'"

Pause.

"I beg you, Mr. Slayton, do not think of such a thing. I would not have him repressed for anything in the world. As you value our future acquaintanceship, do not end our interview. Thank you! I appreciate your compliment, and in return will repeat that, though in a pretty sharp game, you are a true sport. Our friend Arthur is strangely silent. I have never met Mr. Arthur. I have heard that either his face or his hat looks like a fried egg, but I forget for the moment which was so characterized."

Pause.

"Fie, fie! Mr. Arthur. Addison, in his most intoxicated moments, would never have used such language."

And then the man in the cabin, lying on the bed, began to laugh in a low tone. His laugh was not pleasant to hear. He was realizing how funny things were to other people—things that had not been funny to him at all. For the first time he caught a focus on his father, with his pompous pride and his stilted diction; on his mother's social creed. He cared as much for them as ever and his respect was as great, but now he realized that outsiders could never understand them as he did, and that always to others they must appear ridiculous. So he laughed. And, too, he perceived that the world would see something grimly humorous in his insistence on the girl's parentage, when all the time, in the home to which he was to bring her, dwelt these unlovable, snobbish old parents of his own. So he laughed. And he thought of how he had been fooled, and played with, and duped, and cheated, and all but disgraced by the very people on whom he had looked down from a fancied superiority. And so he laughed. And as he laughed his hands swelled up to the size of pillows, and he thought that he was dressed in a loose garment spotted all over with great spots, and that he was standing on a stage before these grave, silent hillmen. The light came in through a golden-yellow square just behind them. In the front row sat Mary, looking at him with wide-open, trusting eyes. And he was revolving these hands like pillows around each other, trying to make the sombre men and the wistful girl laugh with him, while over and over certain words slipped in between his cachinnations, like stray bird-notes through a rattle of drums.

"I have no fresh motley for my lady's amusement," he was saying to her, "no new philosophies to spread out for my lady's inspection, no bright pictures to display for my lady's pleasure, and so I, like a poor poverty-stricken minstrel whose harp has been broken, yet dare beg at the castle gate for a crumb of my lady's bounty." At which he would have wept, but could only laugh louder and louder.

Then dimly he knew again he was in his own room, and he felt that several people were moving back and forth quickly. He tried to rise, but could not, and he knew that he was slipping back to the hall and the solemn crowd of men. He did not want to go. He grasped convulsively at the blanket with his sound hand, and shrieked aloud.

"I am sick! I am sick! I am sick!" he cried louder and louder.

Some one laid a cool hand on his forehead, and he lay quiet and smiled contentedly. The room and the people became wraithlike. He saw them still, but he saw through them to a reality of soft meadows and summer skies, from which Mary leaned, resting her hand on his brow. Voices spoke, but muffled, as though by many veils. They talked of various things.

"It's the mountain fever," he heard one say. "It's a wonder he escaped it so long."

Then the cool hand was withdrawn from his brow, and inexorably he was hurried back into the land of visions.



CHAPTER XXII

FLOWER O' THE WORLD

Bennington de Laney found himself lying comfortably in bed, listening with closed eyes to a number of sounds. Of these there most impressed him two. They were a certain rhythmical muffled beat, punctuated at intervals by a slight rustling of paper; and a series of metallic clicks, softened somewhat by distance. After a time it occurred to him to open his eyes. At once he noticed two things more—that he had some way acquired fresh white sheets for his bed, and that on a little table near the foot of his bunk stood a vase of flowers. These two new impressions satisfied him for some time. He brooded over them slowly, for his brain was weak. Then he allowed his gaze to wander to the window. From above its upper sash depended two long white curtains of some lacelike material, freshly starched and with deep edges, ruffled slightly in a pleasing fashion. They stirred slowly in the warm air from the window. Bennington watched them lazily, breathing with pleasure the balmy smell of pine, and listening to the sounds. The clinking noises came through the open window. He knew now that they meant the impact of sledge on drill. Some one was drilling somewhere. His glance roved on, and rested without surprise on a girl in a rocking chair swaying softly to and fro, and reading a book, the turning of whose leaves had caused the rustling of paper which he had noticed first.

For a long time he lay silent and contented. Her fine brown hair had been drawn back smoothly away from her forehead into a loose knot. She was dressed in a simple gown of white—soft, and resting on the curves of her slender figure as lightly as down on the surface of the warm meadows. From beneath the full skirt peeped a little slippered foot, which tapped the floor rhythmically as the chair rocked to and fro. Finally she glanced up and discovered him locking at her. She arose and came to the bedside, her finger on her lips.

"You mustn't talk," she said sweetly, a great joy in her eyes. "I'm so glad you're better."

She left the room, and returned in a little time with a bowl of chicken broth, which she fed him with a spoon. It tasted very good to him, and he felt the stronger for it, but as yet his voice seemed a long distance away. When she turned to leave the room, however, he murmured inarticulately and attempted to stir. She came back to the bed at once.

"I'll be back in a minute," she said gently, but seeing some look of pleading in his eyes, she put the empty bowl and spoon on the little table and sat down on the floor near the bed. He smiled, and then, closing his eyes, fell asleep—outside the borders of the land of visions, and with the music of a woman's voice haunting the last moments of his consciousness.

After the fever had once broken, his return to strength was rapid. Although accompanied by delirium, and though running its full course of weeks, the "mountain fever" is not as intense as typhoid. The exhaustion of the vital forces is not as great, and recuperation is easier. In two days Bennington was sitting up in bed, possessed of an appetite that threatened to depopulate entirely the little log chicken coop. He found that the tenancy of the camp had materially changed. Mrs. Lawton and Miss Fay had moved in, bag and baggage—but without the inquisitive Maude, Bennington was glad to observe.

Mrs. Lawton, in the presence of an emergency, turned out to be helpful in every way. She knew all about mountain fevers for one thing, and as the country was not yet blessed with a doctor, this was not an unimportant item. Then, too, she was a most capable housekeeper—she cooked, marketed, swept, dusted, and tyrannized over the mere men in a manner to be envied even by a New England dame. Fay and the Leslies had also taken up their quarters in the camp. Old Mizzou and the Arthurs had gone. The old "bunk house" now accommodated a good-sized gang of miners, who had been engaged by Fay to do the necessary assessment work. Altogether the camp was very populous and lively.

After a little Bennington learned of everything that had happened during the three weeks of his sickness. It all came out in a series of charming conversations, when, in the evening twilight, they gathered in the room where the sick man lay. Mary—as Bennington still liked to name her—occupied the rocking chair, and the three young men distributed themselves as best suited them. It was most homelike and resting. Bennington had never before experienced the delight of seeing a young girl about a house, and he enjoyed to the utmost the deft little touches by which is imparted that airily feminine appearance to a room; or, more subtly, the mere spirit of daintiness which breathes always from a woman of the right sort. He felt there was added a newer and calmer element of joy to his love.

During the first period of his illness, then, Jim Fay and the Leslie brothers had worked energetically relocating the claims, while Mrs. Lawton and Miss Fay had taken charge of the house. By the end of the first day the job was finished. The question then came up as to the disposition of the prisoners.

"We didn't want the nuisance of a prosecution," said Fay, "because that would mean that these mossbacks could drag us off to Rapid City any old time as witnesses, and keep us there indefinitely. Neither did we want to let them off scot-free. They'd made us altogether too much trouble for that! Bert here suggested a very simple way out. I went down to Spanish Gulch and told the boys the whole story from start to finish. Well, it isn't hard to handle a Western crowd if you go at it right. The boys always thought you had good stuff in you since you rode the horse and smashed Leary's face that night. It would have been easy to have cooked up all kinds of trouble for our precious gang, but I managed to get the boys in a frivolous mood, so they merely came up and had fun."

"I should say they did!" Bert interjected. "They dragged the crowd out of the shaft—and they were a tough-looking proposition, I can tell you!—and stood them up in a row. They shaved half of Davidson's head and half his beard, on opposite sides. They left tufts of hair all over Arthur. They made a six-pointed star on the top of Slayton's crown. Then they put the men's clothes on wrong side before, and tied them facing the rear on three scrubby little burros. Then the whole outfit was started toward Deadwood. The boys took them as far as Blue Lead, where they delivered them over to the gang there, with instructions to pass them along. They probably got to Deadwood. I don't know what's become of them since."

"I think it was cruel!" put in Miss Fay decidedly.

"Perhaps. But it was better than hanging them."

"What became of Mrs. Arthur?" asked the invalid.

"I shipped her to Deadwood with a little money. Poor creature! It would be a good thing for her if her husband never did show up. She'd get along better without him."

The claims located and the sharpers got rid of, Fay proceeded at once to put the assessment work under way. In this, his long Western experience, and his intimate acquaintance with the men, stood him in such good stead that he was enabled to contract the work at a cheaper rate than Bishop's estimate.

"I wrote to Bishop," he said, "and told him all about it. In his answer, which I'll show you, he took all the blame to himself, just as I anticipated he would, and he's so tickled to death over the showing made by the assays that he's coming out here himself to see about development. So I'm afraid you're going to lose your job."

"I'm not sorry to go home. But I'm sorry to leave the Hills." He looked wistfully through the twilight toward Mary's slender figure, outlined against the window. The three men caught the glance, and began at once to talk in low tones to each other. In a moment they went out. Somehow, on returning from the land of visions, Ben found that the world had moved, and that one of the results of the movement was that many things were taken for granted by the little community of four who surrounded him. It was as though the tangle had unravelled quietly while he slept. She leaned toward him shyly, and whispered something to his ear. He smiled contentedly.

They talked then long and comfortably in the dusk—about how the Leslies had written the letter, how much trouble she had taken to conceal her real identity, and all the rest.

"I sent Bill Lawton up to warn your camp the first day I met you," said she.

"Why, I remember!" he cried. "He was there when I got back."

And they talked on of their many experiences, in the fashion of lovers, and how they had come to care for each other, and when.

"I made up my mind it was so foolish a joke," she confessed, "that I determined to tell you all about it. You remember I had something to tell you at the Pioneer's Picnic? That was it. But then you remember the girl in the train, and how, when she looked at us, you turned away?"

"I remember that well enough," replied Bennington. "But what has that to do with it?"

"It was a perfectly natural thing to do, dearest. I see that plainly enough now. But it hurt me a little that you should be ashamed of me as a Western girl, and I made up my mind to test you."

"Why, I wasn't thinking of that at all," cried Bennington. "I was just ashamed of my clothes. I never thought of you!"

She reached out and patted his hand. "I'm glad to hear that, Ben dear, after all. It did hurt. And I was so foolish. I thought if you were ashamed of me, you would never stand the thought of the Lawtons. So I did not tell you the truth then, but resolved to test you in that way."

"Foolish little girl!" said he tenderly. "But it came out all right, didn't it?"

"Yes," she sighed, with a happy gesture of the hands. They fell silent.

"I want you to tell me something, dear," said Bennington after a while. "You needn't unless you want to, but I've thought about it a great deal."

"I will tell you, Ben, anything in the world. We ought to be frank with each other now, don't you think so?"

"I don't know as I ought to say anything about it, after all," he hesitated, evidently embarrassed. "But, Mary, you know you have hinted a little at it yourself. You remember you said something once about losing faith, and being made hard, and——"

She took both his hands in hers and drew them closely to her breast. Although he could not see her eyes against the dusk, he knew that she was looking at him steadily.

"Listen quietly, Ben dear, and I will tell you. Before I came out here I thought I loved a man, and he—well, he did not treat me well. I had trusted him and every one else implicitly until the very moment when——I felt it very much, and I came West with Jim to get away from the old scenes. Now I know that it was only fascination, but it was very real then. You do not like that, Ben, do you? The memory is not pleasant to me, and yet," she said, with a wistful little break of the voice, "if it hadn't been for that I would not have been the woman I am, and I could not love you, dearest, as I do. It is never in the same way twice, but each time something better and higher is added to it. Oh, my darling, I do love you, I do love you so much, and you must be always my generous, poetic boy, as you are now."

She strained his hands to her as though afraid he would slip from her clasp. "All that is ideal so soon hardens. I can not bear to think of your changing."

Bennington leaned forward and their lips met. "We will forgive him," he murmured.

And what that remark had to do with it only our gentler readers will be able to say.

Ah, the delicious throbbing silence after the first kiss!

"What was your decision that afternoon on the Rock, Ben? You never told me." She asked presently, in a lighter tone, "Would you have taken me in spite of my family?"

He laughed with faint mischief.

"Before I tell you, I want to ask you something," he said in his turn. "Supposing I had decided that, even though I loved you, I must give you up because of my duty to my family—suppose that, I say—what would you have done? Would your love for me have been so strong that you would have finally confessed to me the fact that the Lawtons were not your parents? Or would you have thrown me over entirely because you thought I did not love you enough to take you for yourself?"

She considered the matter seriously for some little time.

"Ben, I don't know," she confessed at last frankly. "I can't tell."

"No more can I, sweetheart. I hadn't decided."

She puckered her brows in the darkness with genuine distress. Women worry more than men over past intangibilities. He smiled comfortably to himself, for in his grasp he held, unresisting, the dearest little hand in the world. Outside, the ever-charming, ever-mysterious night of the Hills was stealing here and there in sighs and silences. From the darkness came the high sweet tenor of Bert Leslie's voice in the words of a song:

"A Sailor to the Sea, a Hunter to the Pines, And Sea and Pines alike to joy the Rover, The Wood-smells to the nostrils of the Lover of the Trail, And Hearts to Hearts the whole World over!"

Through and through the words of the song, like a fine silver wire through richer cloth of gold, twined the long-drawn, tremulous notes of the white-throated sparrow, the nightingale of the North.

"The dear old Hills," he murmured tenderly. "We must come back to them often, sweetheart."

"I wish, I wish I knew!" she cried, holding his hand tighter.

"Knew what?" he asked, surprised.

"What you'd have done, and what I'd have done!"

"Well," he replied, with a happy sigh, "I know what I'm going to do, and that's quite enough for me."

THE END