He did not again see Louise alone. At their informal luncheon the conversation turned upon the more absorbing topic of the Sharpes' discovery, its extent, and its probable effect upon the fortunes of the locality. He noticed, abstractedly, that both Mrs. Bradley and her cousin showed a real or assumed scepticism of its value. This did not disturb him greatly, except for its intended check upon Minty's enthusiasm. He was more conscious, perhaps,--with a faint touch of mortified vanity,--that his own contemplated departure was of lesser importance than this local excitement. Yet in his growing conviction that all was over--if, indeed, it had ever begun--between himself and Louise, he was grateful to this natural diversion of incident which spared them both an interval of embarrassing commonplaces. And, with the suspicion of some indefinable insincerity--either of his own or Louise's--haunting him, Minty's frank heartiness and outspoken loyalty gave him a strange relief. It seemed to him as if the clear cool breath of the forest had entered with her homely garments, and the steadfast truth of Nature were incarnate in her shining eyes. How far this poetic fancy would have been consistent or even coexistent with any gleam of tenderness or self-forgetfulness in Louise's equally pretty orbs, I leave the satirical feminine reader to determine. It was late when Bradley at last returned, bringing further and more complete corroboration of the truth of Sharpe's good fortune. Two experts had arrived, one from Pine Flat and another from the Summit, and upon this statement Richardson had offered to purchase an interest in the discovery that would at once enable the blacksmith to develop his mine. “I shouldn't wonder, Mainwaring,” he added cheerfully, “if he'd put you into it, too, and make your eternal fortune.” “With larks falling from the skies all round you, it's a pity YOU couldn't get put into something,” said Mrs. Bradley, straightening her pretty brows. “I'm not a gold-miner, my dear,” said Bradley, pleasantly. “Nor a gold-finder,” returned his wife, with a cruel little depression of her pink nostrils, “but you can work all night in that stupid mill and then,” she added in a low voice, to escape Minty's attention, “spend the whole of the next day examining and following up a boy's discovery that his own relations had been too lazy and too ignorant to understand and profit by. I suppose that next you will be hunting up a site on the OTHER SIDE of the Canyon, where somebody else can put up a hotel and ruin your own prospects.” A sensitive shadow of pain quickly dimmed Bradley's glance--not the first or last time evidently, for it was gradually bringing out a background of sadness in his intelligent eyes. But the next moment he turned kindly to Mainwaring, and began to deplore the necessity of his early departure, which Richardson had already made known to him with practical and satisfying reasons.