"Of course!" said Brooke, drily. "It's more restful than shovelling. Still, that's my affair, and you'll have to rustle more and wonder less. I'm going to leave you in charge here." Jimmy grinned. "Then I guess the way that dam will grow will astonish you when you come back again. Where're you going to?" Brooke told him, and Jimmy contemplated the forest reflectively. "Well," he said, "nobody who saw you at the ranch would ever have figured you had snap enough to put a contract of that kind through. Still, you have me behind you." "A good way, as a rule," said Brooke, drily. "Especially when there is anything one can get very wet at to be done. Still, I shouldn't wonder if you were quite correct. I scarcely think I ever suspected I had it in myself." Jimmy still ruminated. "A man is like a mine. You see the indications on the top, but you can't be sure whether there's gold at the bottom or dirt that won't pay for washing, until you set the drills going or put in the giant powder and shake everything up. Still, I can't quite figure how anything of that kind could have happened to you." Brooke flashed a quick glance at him, but Jimmy's eyes were vacant, and he was apparently watching a mink slip in and out among the roots of a cedar. "There is a good deal of gravel waiting down there, and only two men to heave it out," he said. "Oh, yes," said Jimmy, tranquilly. "Still, it's a good while until it's dark, and I was thinking. Now, if you had the dollars you threw away over that ranch, and me for a partner, you'd make quite a smart contractor. While they're wanting flumes and bridges everywhere, it's a game one can pile up dollars at." Brooke's face flushed a trifle, and he slowly closed one hand. "Confound the six thousand dollars, and you for reminding me of them!" he said. "Get on with your shovelling." XIII. THE OLD LOVE. Next morning Brooke set out for the Mineral Development Syndicate's new shaft, which lay a long day's ride nearer the railroad through the bush, and was well received by the manager. "Stay just as long as it pleases you, and look at everything you want, though you'll have to excuse me going round with you to-day," he said. "There's a party of the Directors' city friends coming up, and it's quite likely they'll keep me busy." Brooke was perfectly content to go round himself, and he had acquired a good deal of information about the working of aerial tramways when he sat on the hillside watching a rattling trolley swing across the tree tops beneath him on a curving rope of steel. A foreman leaned on a sawn-off cedar close by, and glanced at Brooke with a little ironical grin when a hum of voices broke out behind them. "You hear them? I guess the boss is enjoying himself," he said. Brooke turned his head and listened, and a woman said, "But how do those little specks of gold get into the rock? It really looks so solid."