"I tell you," Mason went on, "if we haven't really struck the lode, and I believe we have, we're right next door to it, anyway. Perhaps I haven't mined that rock year in and year out for ten years without finding out a little something about it. Perhaps I don't know the look of it and the feel of it, and pretty near the taste of it. I'll bet you anything you want, Jack, that inside a month we'll strike as rich copper as ever was mined at the lake." All through supper he talked on in a like strain. Ethel and Jack listening in silence. Then, after the supper dishes were cleared away, and the old man had settled down, pipe in mouth, in front of the kitchen stove, Harrison had his say. "Look here, Jim," he said abruptly, "I did somethin' last night that I suppose is goin' to get you mad. I met Abe Peters walkin' home, an' he tells me he's got one of those eastern sharps stayin' with him, investigatin' likely claims, Abe says, with the idea to buy 'em if they comes up to standard. Abe says he starts to tell him about the Ethel, an' the man seems to be better posted than Abe is himself. Anyways, we fixed it up that Abe's goin' to bring him over to-night after grub, an' we'll have a little talk with him. Can't do no harm, an' the way things is goin' now ain't right to none of us; not to you nor to me nor to the girl here, neither. So you want to treat 'em civil when they come." The old man straightened up in his chair with a glare of resentment, and banged the table with his clenched fist. "No, sir," he exclaimed, "I won't see him or have nothing to do with him, and neither will you. I'll have no man nosing into my claim, or talking of buying it, either. It ain't a mite of use, Jack. The claim ain't for sale, and I won't have 'em coming round bothering me about it. You can get rid of Abe your own way, but I don't let him set foot in this house, him or his mining sharp or anybody else. I won't do it, Jack, for you nor no man." Harrison's jaw set with a resolution quieter, perhaps, but every bit as determined as Mason's.