Harrison eyed him with some disgust. "Ah, cut out the thanks, Bill," he said good-naturedly. "This ain't charity; it's business. We need a watchman, an' if you've got sense enough to keep sober there ain't no reason why you can't hold down the job as well as the next man. It ain't my doings, anyway; it's Gordon's. He's puttin' up the stuff, an' he asks me if I've got any friend I think'll be partial to the job. That's how you come in. But you want to get out of this place pretty damn quick. You've got two days to sober off in, an' then it's up to you whether you make good on your job or not. So you want to make a break out of here right away now. Rum shops ain't healthy for you. Get the idea?" He rose, and Hinckley obediently enough followed suit, although into his drink-sodden brain hardly a word of Harrison's explanation and caution had penetrated. He had a chance at a job, and Harrison had got it for him; those were the two ideas he had absorbed, and those only, and his last words to Harrison were a repetition of his old refrain, "You're good frien' to me, Jack, an' I'll never forget it, never." The week which Gordon had proposed for the consideration of the question of the capital stock had become first two, and then three, without any definite agreement being reached. The old man stood firm. Ten thousand shares, par one hundred; that he had determined upon as the proper thing, and to move him one share or one dollar in either direction seemed apparently a task impossible of achievement. To Gordon, therefore, fell the lot of yielding gracefully, and while he did not at once abandon his position outright, he did take pains to make it clear both to Mason and to Harrison that any arrangement in reason would be satisfactory to him. Thus complete good feeling was restored among the three, each tacitly assuming that some kind of an understanding would be reached whenever Gordon was ready to say the word. Certain much needed improvements, indeed, Gordon insisted upon having made at once; for the mine's sake, as he phrased it, and not for his own. Not the least of these was the appointment of Bill Hinckley as watchman, and in Hinckley's welfare Gordon from the first showed a most kindly interest. Not only did he fit him out with a suit of clothes, a cartridge belt and revolver, but further he did what he could to arouse the drunkard's self-respect, smoothing out occasional dissensions between Mason and Hinckley, and sometimes even, when bound towards the mine, taking Hinckley's lunch pail down to him, and stopping for a pipe and a friendly chat.