It was Dick Dayton who brought him the news. As he listened, he felt something as he did that first day in the canon when the sun got too strong for him. He thought, after Dayton left him, that he should have given up the game then and there, if it had not been for some blasting he was to do in the morning. The holes were all drilled, and it would be a day's job to clear away the pieces and straighten things out at that point. He should hate to have another man go on with the job. They might cut him out with Dorothy,--that was sure to come, sooner or later,--but, by the Great Horn Spoon! they should not get his job away from him! It was not until he had turned in for the night that it occurred to him that he had not asked whom Dorothy was engaged to. What did he care, any way? he said to himself. He had gambled away his chances long ago. Yet, Good Heavens, how dear she was! As he lay on the ground, outside the little lean-to, staring up at the stars that glittered in the thin air with what is called, at lower altitudes, a frosty brilliance, he seemed to see her before him more plainly than he had ever done in the old days when they had stood face to face. He had been too self-absorbed, too blinded and bewildered with the urgency of his own case, to see her as she really was. He remembered now,--something that he had never thought about before,--the little toss of her hair, up from her forehead, which was different from the way other girls wore their hair. It made a little billow there, that was like her free spirit. Yes, she had always had a free spirit. Perhaps it was the claim of ownership he had made, which had repelled her so strongly. As well set up a claim of ownership over those stars up there! He tried to hope that the other fellow was man enough to deserve her; but that was beyond his magnanimity. The only way to bear it, for the present at least, was to leave the "other fellow" out of the question. He was glad he did not know his name. And all night long, as he watched the stars, their slow, imperceptible progress marked only by the intervening tree-twigs, Dorothy's face was fairly visible to him, her voice came to him distinct as an echo; her sweet, free nature unfolded itself to his awakened consciousness.