"You know my mind, little girl. I don't mean to ask you till to-morrow--that's the day set--but I want to say that I've been cleaning house all the week, thinkin' of you. I'm to be a leading citizen from this day on. You won't need to apologize for me. I've never been a drinking man, but I have been a reckless devil. I don't deny that I've planted a wide field of wild oats. However, all that I put away from this hour. 'Tis true I'm forty, but that's not old--I'm no older than I was at twenty-one, sure--and, besides, you're young enough to make up." He smiled, and again she acknowledged the charm of his face when he smiled. "You'll see me grow younger whilst you grow older, and so wan day we'll be of an age." Her customary readiness of reply had left her, and she still sat in silence, a sob in her throat, a curious numbness in her limbs. He seemed to feel that she did not wish to talk. "If you come into partnership with me you need never worry about the question of bread or rent or clothes, and that's worth considerin'--Which road now?" She silently pointed to the left, and they drew near the foot of the great mesa whose level top was cutting the sun in half. The miner was filled with grateful homage. "'Tis a great world!" he exclaimed, softly. "Sure, 'tis only yesterday that I found it out, and lifting me head took a look at the hills and the stars for the first time in twenty years. 'Tis a new road I'm enterin'--whether you come to me or not." All this was wonderful to the girl. Could it be that she was capable of changing the life of a powerful man like this? It filled her with a sense of duty as well as exaltation, an emotion that made a woman of her. She seemed suddenly to have put the hotel and all its worriments far, far behind her. Seized by an impulse to acquaint her with his family, Haney began to tell about his father and his attempts to govern his five sons. "We were devils," he admitted--"broncos, if ever such walked on two legs. We wouldn't go to school--not wan of us except Charley; he did pretty well--and we fished and played ball and went to the circus--" He chuckled. "I left home the first time with a circus. I wanted to be a lion-tamer, but had to content meself with driving the cook wagon. Then I struck West, and I've never been back and I've never seen the old man since, but now I've made me pile, I think I'll go home and hunt him up and buy him new spectacles; it's ace to the three-spot he's using the same horn-rimmed ones he wore when I left." Bertha was interested. "How long did you stay with the circus?" "Not very long. I got homesick and went back, but the next time I left, I left for fair. I've been everywhere but East since. I've been in Colorado mostly. 'Tis a good State." "I like it--but I'd like to see the rest of the country." "You can. If you join hands with me we'll go round the ball together." She did not follow this lead. "I've been to Denver once--went on one of these excursion tickets."