“Quicksilver, isn’t it?” Hildegarde came nearer Cheviot to ask. “Quacksilver, I guess,” but still he followed the discussion about the McKeown “process” as though Hildegarde had been a hundred miles away. “Now, you just time me,” the Ohioan was challenging Cheviot. “I can silver-plate this copper in twenty seconds by the watch.” And he did it. The only person there who was not a witness to the triumph was the girl whose clear eyes seemed to follow the process with a look of flattering interest. Should she, after all, tell Louis, not how glad, but just that she was glad of his coming? Hadn’t he earned that much? Not that he seemed to care greatly about acknowledgments from her. He seemed to have forgotten her existence already, and they hadn’t been together twenty minutes. All the simpler, then! “I tell you what!”—the Ohioan had raised his voice and enlarged his sphere of influence—“I tell you there’s a lot o’ poor prospectors would have been rich men to-day if only I’d discovered sooner how to make amalgam plates this easy and this cheap.” “Cheap, is it?” “Yes, a damned lot cheaper than losin’ half your gold. Cheaper than linin’ your rockers—yes, and your sluices, too, with silver dollars as some fellers did. Now, this little piece of copper”—he produced a new bit—“a child can turn that into an amalgam plate by my process. Here, let the lady show you.” Before Hildegarde knew what was happening, the fragment of metal was in her hand and the owner had tipped the tiny bottle till a drop of the liquid ran out on the copper. “Quick! Rub it all over.” As she did so, she saw that Cheviot’s attention was now undividedly hers. He did not look as if he altogether approved her acting as show woman. But not to disappoint the inventor, Hildegarde rubbed the silvered tip of her finger lightly and evenly over the copper. “Why, yes!” she cried out. “Look!” And as she held up the miraculous result the Ohioan roared with satisfaction, “Ain’t I been tellin’ you?” The copper was turned into a sheet of silver. “Rub and rub as hard as you like now”—he passed the object-lesson round—“you can no more budge a particle of that stuff than you can rub off triple plate. And _that’s_ what you want to line your rockers with!” “Looks like that silverin’ business might be worth somethin’.” “Worth a clean million,” says the Ohioan, as he pocketed his bottle of miracle and walked jauntily away in the sunshine.