Having nothing to do while I waited, I sat on a stool in a corner of the shack, smoking the gift cigar and silently regarding the man who had sent for me. He was a good example of the better type of Western contractor and out-door man; big-bodied, burly, whiskered like a miner, a keen driver on the work, but withal as kindly as a father when kindness was called for. In due time he pushed the figuring pad aside and turned to me. "Drag up your stool, Jim; I want to talk to you," he began. And then: "How much experience have you had in keeping accounts?" I told him briefly. "In a bank, eh?" he queried, and I knew precisely what he was thinking. He was wondering what I had done to break myself. In spite of all that had happened or might happen, I believe I was ready to tell him; but to my astonishment the curt questioning which all my previous experience had taught me to expect at this stage of the game did not come. "This is a free country, Bertrand," he said, looking me squarely in the eye. "I'm not going to ask you why you quit bank bookkeeping to come out here and swing a pick in a construction camp. Here in the tall hills we don't think much of digging up graves--the graves of any man's past. You've done well in every job we've tried you at, and that's all to the good for you." I said I had tried to fill the bill as well as I knew how, and he took me up promptly. "We know you have; and that brings on more talk. Kenniston is leaving us to go prospecting. We've talked it over--Shelton and I--and you're to have the paymaster's job. Think you can hold it down?" "I am sure I can--so far as the routine duties are concerned. But----" Never, in all the soul-killing experiences of the parole period, had I been confronted with a test so gripping. Would this large-hearted man turn the keys of his money chest over to me if he knew I were an ex-convict, liable at any moment to be re-arrested for having broken my parole? I was silent so long that he began again. "Looking around for a spade to begin the grave-digging?" he asked, with a sober smile. Then, with a note of unwonted gentleness in his voice: "I shouldn't do that if I were you, Jimmie. The man doesn't live who hasn't, at one time or another, had to dig a hole and bury something decently out of sight. Whatever you may have done in the past, you're not going to play marbles with the Hadley-and-Shelton pay-money. That's about all there is to it. You may take hold to-morrow morning. Kenniston will stay long enough to show you the ropes."