ing by the safe stuck to me all that day. Suppose I had helped her to cover up a theft from Dudley! It was funny; but the ludicrous side of it did not strike me. What did was that I must see h

the ore, without working the mill and the amalgam plates. It had been no particular matter while the whole mine was only a tentative business, and I had been having half a fit at Dudley's mad extravagance in putting up a ten-stamp mill when we had nothing particular to crush in it. But now, with ore that ran over

to be pretty sure of the honesty of his new amalgam man before he started in to get one. Also-and it struck me as a sentiment I had never heard from a mine superintendent before-that if we sent out for men half of those we got might be riffraff and make tro

h Macartney. But the waste of time in making the mine pay for itself and the stopping of the mill at night galled

could talk to Marcia Wilbraham in the evenings, while Dudley stood between me a

is blasé young face barely veiled a mind that was an encyclop?dia of sin,-or I was much mistaken. And he and Dunn had suddenly ceased to raise Hades in the bunk house every night and developed a taste for going to bed with the hens. At least, the snoring bunk house thought so. If they went abroad instead on whatever they were up to, I never caught them at it; but I did catch them watching me, like lynxes, whenever they were off shift. I never saw either of them speak to Miss Brown, but I got a good growing idea it was just Collins she had meant to interview the night she spoke to me: and it fitted in well enough with my doubts about her and Dudley's gold, for I would have put no gold stealing past Collins. As for Paulett

cut through the bush, long after dark. If I moved Indian-silent in my moccasins it was because I always did. But-halfway to the shack clearing-I stopped short, wolf-silent; which is different. Close by, invisible in the dark spruces, I heard Paulette Brown speaking; a

I'll give you one week more. Then, if you dare to stay on here, and interfere with me or the gold or anything else, I'll confess everyt

u go or don't go, this is the last time I'll ever sneak out to meet you. When you dare to say you love me"-and once more the collected hatred in her voice staggered me, only this t

still, till a sixth sense told me Collins was gone, just as I could have gone myself, without sound or warning. Yet even then I paused instead of going after him. First, because I had no desire to give my reason for dismissing him next morning; second, because I had a startling, ghastly thought that I'd heard Macartney's quiet, characteristic footstep moving away,-and if

r the first time that night. Macartney could not have been out listening in the dark, if I had. He sat lazily in the living room, talking to Marcia, with his feet in old patent leather shoes he could never have run in, even if it had not been plain he had not been out-of-doors at all. Marcia had evidently not been spying either, which was a comfort; and Dudley was out of the question, for he dozed by the fire, palpably half asleep. But suddenly I had a fright. Th

and then to the mine, where he was a rock man, he had apparently fired himself, as Paulette had told him to. He was nowhere to be found, anyhow, or Dunn either. I wasted an hour

of them. Even as it was, I determined to do no forwarding from Caraquet till I knew what something on them meant. For on

obody about to see me off. Dudley was dead to the world, as I'd known he was getting ready to be for a week past; Marcia, to her fury, had had to retire to bed wi

y room for a revolver. This was from sheer habit. The snow still held off, and before me was nothing more exciting than a cold drive over a bad road that was frozen hard as a board, a halt at the Halfway stables to change horses, and perhaps the society of Billy Jones as far as Caraquet,-if he wan

t in my wagon, with my reins in her hands. "My soul," I thought,