“It may be sold for taxes before that.” “Then I’ll buy it in,” Brainard said promptly. They ate the bread and bacon they had brought with them for lunch under a pine tree on a slope of the steep hill above the mine. The old miner shook his head from time to time, and muttered to himself over the strange dispensations of Providence that left a rich mine like the Melody abandoned. Brainard thought of the girl who had escaped him, and planned vaguely what his next steps should be. “There’s an old crater up among them hills,” the miner vouchsafed, when the last slice of bacon and bread had disappeared, “and some sulfur springs. There’s another fortune, maybe, if you could get at the sulfur.” “I’ll take a look at it,” Brainard said. “How do you go?” And so, while the old man turned back to look after their horses, which they had left tethered far below, Brainard clambered on among the sharp peaks toward the snow beds that lay in drifts along the ragged edge of the mountains. He passed the circular depression of which the miner had spoken, and noticed the yellow crust upon the earth; but for a long time he kept on upward. He wanted to be alone, to think over a certain daring idea that had seized hold of him while the miner was showing him the neglected riches of the Melody mine. Perhaps the keen mountain air, blowing dry and fresh from the desert below, had its part in stirring his brain to unwonted excitement. Perhaps it was the reaction from his disappointment of the evening before in not finding his young mistress waiting to receive her fortune. However that might be, his idea kept teasing him, expanding all the time in reasonableness and urgency. Why should he not take up Krutzmacht’s purpose—use part of the money he had obtained from the bankers in developing this great property? While he was prosecuting the search for the young girl, which he foresaw might take much time, might indeed end in failure, this work would give a new incentive, a new meaning to his long adventure. “Give it all to Melody!” the old adventurer had whispered with his last breath. Yes, all to Melody in one form or another, as soon as possible. He would dive deeper than the letter of Krutzmacht’s word—he would do as the old man might have done himself, if his life had gone on. He would fulfill his inmost purposes.