Frost turned from the window, and, seating himself by the log fire, began leisurely to fill his pipe. "So we see the gentlemen to-night, do we?" he asked. Peters nodded. "That's what we do," he answered, "and, Mr. Frost, I'm givin' this to you straight. I'm a friend of Jim's and I'm a friend of yours, and I want to see you both come out of this thing right. And the way to do it's for you to buy a half interest in the Ethel. That's best for him and it's best for you, too." Frost smiled. "So you think half a loaf's better than no bread, do you?" he said. "Well, that's right enough sometimes, but where a man wants to buy the whole blamed bake-shop, why, then it doesn't quite seem to fit. Yes, I've got to do my best, anyway. And I wonder, Abe, which is the real man I ought to get next to here, Mason or Harrison." Peters put the last dish away on the shelf, and in turn drew up his chair and, fumbling in his pocket, drew forth and lighted a grimy pipe. He shook his head doubtfully. "That's more'n I can tell," he answered, "but we've got half an hour yet before we start, an' I can give you the story, anyway; then you can figure things out for yourself, an' you won't be blamin' me. How's that suit?" Frost blew a beautifully rounded ring of smoke, and leisurely watched it float upward. "Fine," he assented. "Just what I was going to ask. I'm all attention, Abe. Let her go." For some minutes Peters puffed in silence; then took his pipe from his mouth and began. "In the first place," he said slowly, "Jim Mason's an all fired smart man. He wa'nt born and brought up here, like I was. He used to live down Octagon way. Soon as he left school, he went to copper minin'. I've heard him tell about it fifty times. 'I began,' he says, 'at the bottom o' the mine an' the bottom o' my trade, an' I worked pretty well up to the top in both of 'em.' An' it's the truth, too. He was one o' the best surface men at the lake, an' earnin' good money; layin' it away, too, an' that's more than a lot of 'em can say. Then he gets married an' settles down, an' then damned if a while after that an epidemic o' typhoid don't hit the Octagon camp, an' Jim's wife takes it an' dies in a week. Well, that breaks him up complete. After a while he finds he can't stand it round home noways, so he takes his little girl an' moves up here to Seneca. Always he's claimin' the Onondaga lode hits here somewheres after it dips. So he fools around for a while, an' then, after a year or so, he stakes out his claim, names it the Ethel after his little girl, hires a gang o' men, an' goes to work. Four years he's fitted out for, an' blamed if they don't turn out to be four hard luck years. First he strikes tough rock, then the price o' labor goes up on him, then he gets sick himself, an' it's most a year before he's right again; it's one thing here and another there, so finally he has to let his gang go, an' by that time he's so plumb crazy over his claim that he goes on workin' her by himself,