Dick suddenly crumpled the sheet of paper, and put it in his pocket. He lifted himself, as a man distracted, from the chair in which he had been sitting, gripping the arms with hands that were tensely responding to an agony of spirit. He almost lurched forward as he stepped to the little steps leading down from the porch, and into the worn trail, hesitated at the forks leading to mess-house or assay office, and then mechanically turned in the latter direction, it being where the greater number of his working hours were passed.

“Where you goin’?” the voice of his partner called, as he plunged forward.

He had to make a determined attempt to speak, then his voice broke, harsh and strained, through dry lips:

“Assay office.”

He did not look back, but went forward, with 272 limp hands and tottering knees, turning neither to right nor left. The whole world was a haze. The steadfast mountain above him was a cynical monster, and dimly, in the shadow of the high landmark, he discerned a change, sinister, gloating, and leering on him and his misery. The soft voices of the men of the day shift returning from their voluntary task, the staccato exhaust of the hoisting engine bringing up a load of ore from the refound lead, the clash of a car dumping its load of waste, and the roar of the Rattler’s stamps, softened by distance, blended into discordance.

He entered the assay-house like a whipped dog seeking the refuge of its kennel, threw himself on a stool before the bench, leaned his head into his hollowed arms, and groaned as would a stricken warrior of olden days when surrendering to his wounds.

This, then, explained it all––that sequence of events, frustrating, harrying, baffling him, since the first hour he had come to the mine of the Croix d’Or. The rough suggestion of Bully Presby on the first day, discouraging him; the harsh attitude; the persistent attempts to dishearten him and buy him out; the endeavor to buy half the property from, and remove the backing, of Sloan, without which he could not go on; 273 the words of the watchman, who doubtless had discovered Bully Presby’s secret theft, blackmailed him as much as he could, and, dying, cursed him; but, hating the men of the mine more, had withheld the vital meaning of his accusation. Perhaps Presby had been instrumental in Thompson’s strike. But no, that could scarcely be, although, in the light of other events in that iniquitous chain, it might be possible. That he had any part in the dynamiting of the dam or power-house, Dick cast aside as unworthy of such a man. The strong, hard, masterful, and domineering face of Bully Presby arose before him as from the darkening shadows of the room, and it seemed triumphant.

He lifted his head suddenly, thinking, in his superacute state of mind, that he had heard a noise. He must have air! The assay office, with its smell of nitric acid, its burned fumes, its clutter of broken cupels and slag, was unbearable. He arose from the stool so suddenly that it went toppling over to fall against the stacked crucibles beneath the bench which lent their clatter to the upset. He stepped out into the night. It was dark, only the stars above him dimly betraying the familiar shapes of mountains, forests, and buildings around. Up in the bunk-house some 274 man was wailing a verse of “Ella Re,” accompanied by a guitar, and the doleful drone of the hackneyed chorus was caught up by the other men “off shift.” But, nauseating as it was to him, this piebald ballad of the hills, it contained one shrieking sentence: “Lost forevermore!” That was it! Joan was lost!

He looked up at the superintendent’s quarters, which had been his home, and saw that its lights were out. Bill, he conjectured, always hard working and early rising, had tumbled into his bed, unconscious of this tragedy. He struck off across the gulch, and took the trail he had so frequently trodden with a beating heart, and high and tender hope. It led him to the black barrier of the pipe line, the place where first he had met her, the sacred clump of bushes that had held and surrendered to him the handkerchief enshrined in his pocket, the slope where she had leaned down from her horse and kissed him in the only caress he had ever received from her lips, and told him that he should be with her in her prayers.

Reverently he caressed with his hands the spot where she had so often sat on a gray old bowlder, flat-topped. His heart cried for one more sight of her, one more caress, one more opportunity 275 to listen to her voice before he dealt her the irrevocable wound that would end it all.

Not for an instant did he waver. The tempter, whispering in his ear, told him that he could conceal his knowledge, advise Sloan to sell, take his chance with Joan, and let the sleeping dog lie, forever undiscovered. It told him that Sloan was admittedly rich beyond his needs, and that with him the Croix d’Or was merely a matter of sentiment, and an opportunity of bestowing on the son of his old-time friend a chance to get ahead in the world.

But back of it all came the inexorable voice of truth, telling Dick that there was but one course open, and that was reparation; that to his benefactor he owed faith and loyalty; that Presby must pay, though his––Richard Townsend’s––castles crumbled to dust in the wreckage of exposure. He must break the heart and faith of the girl who loved him, and whom, with every fiber of his being, he loved in return.

She would stand in the world as the daughter of a colossal thief! Not a thief of the marts, where crookedness was confused with shrewdness far removed from the theft of the hands; but a thief who had burrowed beneath another man’s property, and carried away, to coinage, his 276 gold. Between Bully Presby and the man who tunneled under a bank to loot the safe, there was no moral difference save in the romance of that mystic underground world where men bored like microbes for their spoil.

“Joan! Joan! Joan!” he muttered aloud, as if she were there to hear his hurt appeal.

It was for her that he felt the wound, and not for Bully Presby, her father. For the latter he spared scant sympathy; but it was Joan who would be stricken by any action he might take, and the action must be taken, and would necessarily be taken publicly.

Under criminal procedure men had served long terms behind bars for less offenses than Presby’s. Others had made reparation through payment of money, and slunk away into the shadows of disgrace to avoid handcuffs. And the fall of Presby of the Rattler, as a plunderer, was one that would echo widely in the mining world where he had moved, a stalwart, unbending king. Not until then had Dick realized how high that figure towered. Presby, the irresistible, a thief, and fighting to keep out of the penitentiary, while Joan, the brave, the loving, the true, cowered in her room, dreading to look the world in the face.

And he, the man who loved her, almost accepted 277 as her betrothed, with the ring even then burning in his pocket, was the one who must deal her this blow!

He got up and staggered through the darkness along the length of the line, almost envying the miserable dynamiter, who had died above the remnant of wall, for the quiet into which he had been thrust. If the train bringing him homeward had been wrecked, and his life extinguished, he could have saved her this. The Cross would have been sold. She might have grieved for him, for a time, but wounds will heal, unless too deep. He stood above the abyss where daylight showed ruins, and knew that the destruction of the dam, heavy a blow as it had seemed when inflicted, was nothing as compared to this ruin of dreams, of love, and hope.

“Dick! Dick! What is it, boy?” came a soft voice from the night, scarcely above a whisper. “Can’t you tell me, old man? Ain’t we still pardners? Just as we uster be?”

He peered through the darkness, roused from his misery in the stillness of the hour, and the night, by the appeal. Dimly he discerned, seated above him on the abutment, a shape outlined against the stars. It threw itself down with hard-striking feet, and came toward him, and he knew 278 it was not a phantom of misery. It came closer to where he stood on the brink of the blackness, and laid a hand on his shoulder, put it farther across and held him, as tenderly as father might have held, in this hour of distress.

“I’ve been follerin’ you, boy,” the kindly voice went on. “I saw that somethin’ had got you. That you were hard hit! I’ve been near you for the last two or three hours. I don’t know as I’d have bothered you now, if I hadn’t been afraid you’d fall over. Let’s go back, Dick––back to the mine.”

It seemed as if there had come to him in the night a strong support. Numbed and despairing, but with a strange relief, he permitted Bill to lead him back over the trail, and at last, when they were standing above the dim buildings below, found speech.

“It’s her,” he said. “It’s for her sake that I hate to do it. It’s Joan!”

“Sit down here by me,” the big voice, commiserating, said. “Here on this timber. I’ve kept it to myself, boy, but I know all about her. I stood on the bank, where I’d just gone to hunt you, on that day she reached down from the saddle. I knew the rest, and slipped away. You love her. She’s done somethin’ to you.”

“No!” the denial was emphatic. “She hasn’t! She’s as true as the hills. It’s her father. Look here!”

He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out the crumpled sheet, and struck a match. Bill took the letter in his hands and read, while the night itself seemed pausing to shield the flickering flame. With hurried fingers he struck another match, and the light flared up, exposing his frowning eyebrows, the lights in his keen eyes, the tight pressure of his firm lips.

He handed the letter back, and for a long time sat silently staring before him, his big, square shoulders bent forward, and his hat outlined against the light of the night, which was steadily increasing.

“I see how it is,” he said at last. “And it’s hard on you, isn’t it, boy? A man can stand anything himself, but it’s hell to hurt those we care for.”

The sympathy of his voice cut like a knife, with its merciful hurt. Dick broke into words, telling of his misery, but stammering as strong men stammer, when laying bare emotions which, without pressure, they always conceal. His partner listened, motionless, absorbing it all, and his face 280 was concealed by the darkness, otherwise a great sympathy would have flared from his eyes.

“We’ve got to find a way out of this, Dick,” he said at last, with a sigh. And the word “we” betrayed more fully than long sentences his compassion. “We must go slow. Somehow, I reckon, I’m cooler than you in this kind of a try-out. Maybe because it don’t hit me so close to home. Let’s go back, boy, back to the cabin, and try to rest. The daylight is like the Lord’s own drink. It clears the head, and makes us see things better than we can in the night––when all is dark. Let’s try to find a way out, and try to forget it for a while. Did you ever think how good it all is to us? Just the night, coming along every once in a while, to make us appreciate how good the sun is, and how bright the mornings are. It ain’t an easy old world, no matter how hard we try to make it that; because it takes the black times to make our eyes glad to watch the sunrise. Let me help you, old pardner. We’ve been through some pretty tight places together, and somehow, when He got good and ready, the Lord always showed us a way out.”

He arose on his feet, stretched his long muscular arms, and started down the hill, and Dick followed. There was not another word exchanged, 281 other than the sympathetic “good-night” in which they had not failed for more than seven years, and outside the stars waned slowly, the stamp mill of the Rattler roared on, and the Croix d’Or was unmoved.

The daylight came, and with it the boom of the night shift setting off its morning blasts, and clearing the way for the day shift that would follow in sinking the hole that must inevitably betray the dishonesty of the stern mine master at the foot of the hill. Dick had not slept, and turned to see a shadow in the door.

“Don’t you get up, Dick,” Bill said. “Just try to rest. I heard you tumblin’ around all the night. You don’t get anywhere by doin’ that. A man has to take himself in hand more than ever when there’s big things at stake. Then’s when he needs his head. You just try to get some rest. I’ll keep things goin’ ahead all right, and there ain’t no call to do nothin’ for a week or ten days––till we get our feet on the ground. After that we’ll find a trail. Don’t worry.”

Through the kindly tones there ran confidence, and, entirely exhausted, Dick turned over and tried to sleep. It came to him at last, heavy and dreamless, the sleep that comes beneficently to those who suffer. The sun, creeping westward, 282 threw a beam across his face, and he turned restlessly, like a fever-stricken convalescent, and rolled farther over in the bed.

The beam pursued him, until at last there was no further refuge, and he sat up, dazed and bewildered, and hoping that all had been a nightmare, and that he should hear the cheery note of the whistle telling him that it was day again, and calling the men of the Croix d’Or to work.

It was monstrous, impossible, that all should have changed. It was but yesterday that he had returned to the mine with finances assured, confidence restored, and the certainty that Joan Presby loved him, and could come to his side when his work was accomplished.

He looked at his watch and the bar of sunlight. It was four o’clock, and the day was gone. Everything was real. Everything was horrible. He crawled stiffly from his bed, thrust his head into the cold water of the basin, and, unshaven, stepped out to the porch and down the trail.

The plumes of smoke still wreathed upward from two stacks. Bill was still driving downward unceasingly. The mellow clang of the smith’s hammer, sharpening drills, smote his ears, and the rumble of the cars. The cook, in a high, thin tenor, sang the songs with which he habitually 283 whiled away his work. Everything was the same, save him! And his air castles had been blown away as by the wind.

In a fever of uncertainty, he stood on the hillside and thought of what he should do. He believed that it was his duty to be the one to break the harsh news to Joan, and wondered whether or not she might be found at the tryst. He remembered that, once before when he had not appeared, she had ridden over there in the afternoon. Perhaps, expecting him, and being disappointed, she might be there again.

He hurried down the slope, and back up across the divide and along the trail, his hopes and uncertainties alone rendering him certain that she must be there, and paused when the long, black line shone dully outlined in its course around the swelling boss of the hill. He experienced a thrill of disappointment when he saw that she was not waiting, and, again consulting his watch feverishly, tramped backward and forward along the confines of the hallowed place.

At last, certain from the fresh hoof marks on the yielding slope, that she had come and gone, he turned, and went slowly back to the mine. He had a longing to see his partner, and learn whether or not Mathews, with that strange, resourceful 284 logic of his, had evolved some way out of the predicament. But Bill was nowhere in sight. He was not in the office, and the mill door was locked. The cook had not seen him; and the blacksmith, busy, stopped only long enough to say that he thought he had seen the superintendent going toward the hoisting-house.

“Have you seen Bill?” Dick asked of the engineer, who stood at his levers, and waited for a signal.

“He’s below,” the engineer answered, throwing over an arm, and watching the cage ascend with a car of ore.

It trundled away, and Dick stepped into the cage. The man appeared irresolute, and embarrassed.

“He’ll be up pretty soon, I think,” he ventured.

“Well, I’ll not wait for him,” Dick said. “Lower away.”

The man still stood, irresolute.

“Let her go, I said,” Dick called sharply, his usual patience of temper having gone.

“But––but–––” halted the engineer. “Bill said to me, when he went down, says he: ‘You don’t let any one come below. Understand? I don’t care if it’s Townsend himself. Nobody 285 comes down. You hold the cage, because I’ll send the shift up, and ‘tend to the firing myself.’”

For an instant Dick was enraged by this stubbornness, and turned with a threat, and said: “Who’s running this mine? I don’t care what he said. You haven’t understood him. Lower away there, I say, and be quick about it!”

The rails and engine room slid away from him. The cage slipped downward on its oiled bearings, as if reluctant, and the light above faded away to a small pin-point below, and then died in obscurity, as if the world had been blotted out. Only the sense of falling told him that he was going down, down, to the seven-hundred-foot level, and then he remembered that he had no candle. The cage came to a halt, and he fumbled for the guard bar, lifted it, and stepped out.

Straight ahead of him he saw a dim glow of light. With one hand on the wall he started toward it, approached it, and then, in the hollow of illumination saw something that struck him like a blow in the face. The hard, resounding clash of his heels on the rock underfoot stopped. His hands fell to his sides, as if fixed in an attitude of astonishment. Standing in the light beyond him stood Joan, with her hands raised, palms outward.

“Stop!” she commanded. “Stop! Stay where you are a moment!”

Amazed and bewildered, he obeyed mechanically, and comprehended rather than saw that, crouched on the floor of the drift beyond, his partner knelt with a watch in his hand, and in a listening attitude. Suddenly, as if all had been waiting for this moment, a dull tremor ran through the depths of the Croix d’Or. A muffled, beating, rending sound seemed to tear its way, vibrant, through the solid ledge. He leaped forward, understanding all at once, as if in a flash of illumination, what the woman he loved and his partner had been waiting for. It was the sound of the five-o’clock blasts from the Rattler, as it stole the ore from beneath their feet. It was the audible proof of Bully Presby’s theft.

“Joan! My Joan!” he said, leaping forward. “I should have spared you this!”

But she did not answer. She was leaning back against the wall of the tunnel, her hands outstretched in semblance of that cross whose name was the name of the mine–––as if crucified on its cross of gold. The flaring lights of the candles in the sticks, thrust into the crevices around, lighted her pale, haggard face, and her white 287 hands that clenched themselves in distress. She looked down at the giant who was slowly lifting himself from his knees, with his clear-cut face upturned; and the hollows, vibrant with silence, caught her whispered words and multiplied the sound to a sibilant wail.

“It’s true!” she said. “It’s true! You didn’t lie! You told the truth! My father––my father is a thief, and may God help him and me!”