I did not know, at the time, of any reason why I should have returned to resume my lonesome watch at the shaft's mouth like a man walking upon air, but so it was. There are women who keep the fair promise of their childhood, and we admire them; there are others who prodigiously and richly exceed that promise, and they own us, body and soul, from the moment of re-discovery. Throughout the long night hours following Mary Everton's visit I was far enough, I hope, from envying Barrett; far enough, too, from the thought that I might ever venture to ask any good and innocent young woman to step down with me into the abyss of unearned infamy into which I had been flung, largely through the efforts of another woman who was neither good nor innocent. None the less, the delight which was half intoxication remained and the night was full of waking dreams. The dark shaft beside me sent up its dank breath of stale powder fumes, and the acrid odor was as the fragrance of a fertile field ripe for the sickle. In this reeking pit at my elbow, gold, the subtle, the potent, the arbiter of all destinies, stood ready to fight for me. The liberty which I had stolen, but which had first been stolen from me, would shortly find a defender too strong to be overthrown by all the prejudice and injustice which are so ready to fly at the throat of helplessness. The reinstatement, which I had been unable to win as a mendicant ex-convict, I could buy with gold in the open market; and when it should be bought and paid for, all the world would clap and cry, Well done! Barrett had gone to bed exacting a promise that I should call him at two o'clock. But I let the hour go by, and another, and yet another, until the stars were paling in the east when I got up, stiff in every joint, to meet Gifford as he came up the gulch. He was haggard and weary, trembling like an overworked draft horse, and he had to lick his lips before he could frame the words which were to be our alarm signal. "It's all over," he croaked hoarsely. "The wagon's broke down a couple of miles below, right out on the open mountain-side. We've been working like hell all night trying to drag the load down to some place where we could hide it, but it was no good. Dixon's gone on to town to get another wagon, but the mischief is done. Come daylight, everybody on this side of Bull Mountain will know what's in that wagon, and where it comes from."