Two weeks later Ora and Ida sailed from Havre. Gregory had cabled, and the _Herald_ had published a dramatic account, of the wounding of Mr. Mark Blake in the tunnel of his wife’s mine. The engineers’ lease had expired and he had closed down the mine temporarily. The sinking of the inclined shaft in the “Apex” had proceeded very slowly owing to the uncommon hardness of the rock; it would seem that Nature herself had taken a hand in the great fight and enlisted for once on the side of the weaker power. Although when Osborne and Douglas had turned over the mine, their cross-cut almost had reached the point on the vein which the new shaft expected to strike, Gregory had risen twice in the night and walked along the hill beyond his boundary, reasonably sure that all the blasting was not in the shaft, his keen ear detecting muffled reverberations slightly to the east and at a greater depth. He communicated his suspicions to Mark, and on the following night they examined the lock on the Primo shaft house and discovered that it had been tampered with. They went down by way of the ladder; and in the cross-cut on the chalcopyrite vein they found miners working with hand drills. There was a desperate hand-to-hand fight with the manager and shift boss; the miners, who were bohunks, proceeding phlegmatically with their work. The four men had wrestled out into the station at the foot of the shaft, where they had drawn their “guns”; each had been wounded, but only Mark seriously. He had received a ball in the lung and another in the leg. The night was bitterly cold and it was some time before Gregory and the two antagonists could get him to the surface. He had insisted upon being taken to a hospital in Butte; and, between loss of blood, shock, and pneumonia, his condition was precarious. The girls, who had left Monte Carlo two days after Valdobia’s sudden departure, received the news in Paris, where they were replenishing their wardrobes. Ora, torn with remorse, and terrified with vague and tragic visions of the future, was in a distracted condition; but Ida, although she sincerely lamented the possible demise of her old friend, did not lose her head. She gave final and minute orders to tailors and dressmakers, instructed them to send the trousseaux in bond directly to Great Falls, Montana, devoted a morning to the selection of hats both for herself and her friend, and packed all the trunks. Mowbray, always willing to be useful, bought their tickets and escorted them to Havre. Ida thanked him with something like real warmth as they parted at the head of the gangplank, and promised him the “time of his life” when he came to Montana in the summer. “Now, buck up,” she said, smiling into his disconsolate face; “you know I’m not flirting with you. We’re the best of pals. I’ll be glad to see you, all right, and perhaps I’ll find a nice little heiress for you.”