“I've been wondering if one of us oughtn't to have gone with him? He's just as likely to pour his money into the first lap that opens for it,” said Stacy. “The more reason why we shouldn't prevent him, or seem to prevent him,” said Demorest almost fiercely. “There will be knaves and fools enough who will try and put the idea of our using him into his simple heart without that. No! Let him do as he likes with it--but let him be himself. I'd rather have him come back to us even after he's lost the money--his old self and empty-handed--than try to change the stuff God put into him and make him more like others.” The tone and manner were so different from Demorest's usual levity that Stacy was silent. After a pause he said: “Well! we shall miss him on the hillside--won't we?” Demorest did not reply. Reaching out his hand abstractedly, he wrenched off a small slip from a sapling near him, and began slowly to pull the leaves off, one by one, until they were all gone. Then he switched it in the air, struck his bootleg smartly with it, said roughly: “Come, let's get to work!” and strode away. Meantime Barker on his way to Boomville was no less singular in his manner. He kept up his slightly affected attitude until he had lost sight of the cabin. But, being of a simple nature, his emotions were less complex. If he had not seen the undoubted look of affection in the eyes of his partners he would have imagined that they were jealous of his good fortune. Yet why had they refused his offer to share it with him? Why had they so strangely assumed that their partnership with him had closed? Why had they declined to go with him? Why had this money--of which he had thought so little, and for which he had cared so little--changed them toward him? It had not changed HIM--HE was the same! He remembered how they had often talked and laughed over a prospective “strike” in mining and speculated what THEY would do together with the money! And now that “luck” had occurred to one of them, individually, the effect was only to alienate them! He could not make it out. He was hurt, wounded--yet oddly enough he was conscious now of a certain power within him to hurt and wound in retribution. He was rich: he would let them see HE could do without them. He was quite free now to think only of himself and Kitty.