“Well, then--it sounds improper, but it isn't the least bit. It's right. Isn't it?” “It ce'tainly is.” “But you know I've always thought that people who got engaged so soon are the same kind of people that correspond through matrimonial papers. I didn't suppose it would ever happen to me.” “Some right strange things happen while a person is alive, Peggy.” “And I don't really know anything at all about you except that you say your name is Larry Neill. Maybe you are married already.” She paused, startled at the impossible thought. “It must have happened before I can remember, then,” he laughed. “Or engaged. Very likely you have been engaged a dozen times. Southern people do, they say.” “Then I'm an exception.” “And me--you don't know anything about me.” “A fellow has to take some risk or quit living,” he told her gaily. “When you think of my temper doesn't it make you afraid?” “The samples I've had were surely right exhilarating,” he conceded. “I'm expecting enough difference of opinion to keep life interesting.” “Well, then, if you won't be warned you'll just have to take me and risk it.” And she slipped her arm into his and held up her lips for the kiss awaiting her. CHAPTER XII -- EXIT DUNKE Dunke plowed back through the tunnel in a blind whirl of passion. Rage, chagrin, offended vanity, acute disappointment, all blended with a dull heartache to which he was a stranger. He was a dangerous man in a dangerous mood, and so Wolf Struve was likely to discover. But the convict was not an observant man. His loose upper lip lifted in the ugly sneer to which it was accustomed. “Got onto you, didn't she?” Dunke stuck his candle in a niche of the ragged granite wall, strode across to his former partner in crime, and took the man by the throat. “I'll learn you to keep that vile tongue of yours still,” he said between set teeth, and shook the hapless man till he was black in the face. Struve hung, sputtering and coughing, against the wall where he had been thrown. It was long before he could do more than gasp. “What--what did you do--that for?” His furtive ratlike face looked venomous in its impotent anger. “I'll pay you for this--and don't you--forget it, Joe Dunke!” “You'd shoot me in the back the way you did Jim Kinney if you got a chance. I know that; but you see you won't get a chance.” “I ain't looking for no such chance. I--” “That's enough. I don't have to stand for your talk even if I do have to take care of you. Light your candle and move along this tunnel lively.” Something in Dunke's eye quelled the rebellion the other contemplated. He shuffled along, whining as he went that he would never have looked for his old pal to treat him so. They climbed ladders to the next level, passed through an empty stope, and stopped at the end of a drift.