In such crises the twig is predestined to snap, or the pebble to roll. Some slight movement on my part set a little cataract of broken stone tumbling into the shaft. Before I could recover from the prickling shock of alarm, I heard footsteps and a shadowy figure appeared in the path leading over the spur from the Lawrenceburg. Automatically the rifle flew to my shoulder, and a crooking forefinger was actually pressing the trigger when reason returned and I saw that the approaching intruder was a woman. I was deeply grateful that it was too dark for Mary Everton to see with what teeth-chatterings and reactionary tremblings I was letting down the hammer of the rifle when she came up. For that matter, I think she did not see me at all until I laid the gun aside and stood up to speak to her. She had stopped as if irresolute; was evidently disconcerted at finding the claim shack dark and apparently deserted. "Oh!" she gasped, with a little backward start, as I rose from the empty dynamite box upon which I had been sitting. Then she recognized me and explained. "I--I thought you would be working--you have been working nights, haven't you?--and I came over to--to speak to Mr. Barrett." Under other conditions I might have been conventionally critical. My traditions were still somewhat hidebound. In Glendale a young woman would scarcely go alone at night in search of a man, even though the man might be her lover. "Barrett has gone to bed: I'll call him," I said, limiting the rejoinder to the bare necessities. "No; please don't do that," she interposed. "I am sure he must be needing his rest. I can come again--at some other time." I was beginning to get a little better hold upon my nerves by this time and I laughed. "Bob is needing the rest, all right, but he will murder me when he finds out that you've been here and I didn't call him. If you want to save my life, you'd better reconsider." "No; don't call him," she insisted. "It isn't at all necessary, and--and perhaps you can tell me what I want to know--what I ought to know before I----" the sentence trailed off into nothing and she began again rather breathlessly: "Mr. Bertrand, can you--can you satisfy me in any way that you and your two friends have a legal right to this claim you are working? It's a perfect--impertinence in me, to ask, I know, but----" "It is a fair question," I hastened to assure her; "one that any one might ask. With the proper means at hand--maps and records--I could very easily answer it." "But--but there may have been mistakes made," she suggested. "Doubtless there were; but we haven't made them. The Lawrenceburg Company owns the ground on two sides of us, and for some considerable distance beyond us toward the head of the gulch; but I can assure you that our title to the Little Clean-Up is perfectly good and legal in every way."