So, lighting a candle for her, and guiding her steps very carefully, Ralph assists his daughter down the incline, and the two shortly come to the station, and turning along the level that runs away from the Mineral Hill Mine, Ralph pauses at the fourth set of timbers and laughs, "What do you say to this for a bachelor's apartment?" To this his daughter cries, "Oh, sybarite!--you've even got champagne and dried buffalo tongues." As he has, a dozen pints of Veuve Clicquot, likewise Chateau Margaux, as well as a couple of boxes of rare Havanas, and canned provisions; a soft mattress and warm blankets; a chair to sit upon, half a dozen novels and some current literature to kill time with, lots of candles to illuminate his retreat, and plenty of water in a small barrel. "I'll be pretty comfortable here, I imagine," he says, contemplatively. "No, you'll be cold," answers the young lady. "Cold?--a hundred feet under the ground? This depth is the perfection of climate. It is neither too warm in summer nor too frigid in winter. I shall be very snug down here," he remarks; then chuckles, "while my friend Kruger is hunting for me through snow-storms and blizzards on the outer earth." "Still it seems horrible," mutters the girl with a shudder, "for you to be buried under the ground. The air----" "Is excellent!" interrupts Ralph, tapping the tin air-pipe with his hand. "This is a natural draught--not enough for twenty or thirty men working down here unless the fan is in operation, but lots for two or three. See how brightly my candles burn!" Then he says sharply, "We've no time to lose. Pioche George will be getting impatient up-stairs. Hold a candle for me, my darling!" With a pick-axe he has brought down with him, he exhumes from underneath the fourth set of timbers a small iron box, strongly secured by padlock, and giving it with its key to Erma, says: "Do as I have directed with this. It is the Utah Central stock." Then, for the parting is coming, she falters: "Father, when will you join me?" "As soon as you are surely safe and out of this accursed Territory, and Kruger has disappeared, pursuing me with his Mormon bloodhounds." A second after, he bursts out, as if a great relief has come upon him, from throwing off the bonds that have held him so long: "Oh, how I have scoffed them in my heart, as I have preached their religious bosh at Conference and ward meeting, all these years. Won't this be a great story to tell in the Unity Club, New York, to my old chums, De Punster and Van Beekman, Travis and Larry Jerry, and the rest of the boys? How they will shriek at Ralph Travenion, the swell, having been a Mormon! Won't the champagne flow to my plural marriages? Egad! it's worth while to take these risks, to have such a royal story to tell!" "Hush!" cries his daughter, sternly. "Remember the poor women you are deserting." A moment after she says more slowly, "They must be provided for as soon as you are safe."