"I told you I was _sorry_!" she cried, stamping her foot. "Isn't that enough? I'm sorry, I said!" "Yes, and I'm sorry," he answered, but his eyes were level and his jaw jutted out like a crag. "Sorry for what?" she demanded, and he sprang his trap. "Sorry I can't go out and hunt for your father." "Oh," she said, and drooped her head. "If we could pay for what we've done by just being sorry," he went on with a ghost of a smile, "we wouldn't be where we are. But you know we can't, Virginia. I'm sorry for some things myself, and I expect to pay for them, but I can't stop to do it now." "But will you go for him--sometime?" she asked, smiling wistfully. "Then--oh, Wiley; why can't we be friends?" She held out her hands and he rose up and took them, but with a startled look in his eyes. "You know that I'm sorry," she said, "and I'm willing to pay, too; if there's anything that I can do. Can't I help you, Wiley? Isn't there something I can do to help you pay for your mine? And I'll never oppose you again--if you'll only go and find my father!" She raised his hands and put them against her cheek and the quick tears sprang to his eyes. "I'll do it," he promised, "just the minute I can go. And--I'll try to be good to you, Virginia. Won't you give me a kiss, just to show it's all right? I'm sorry I treated you so rough. But it'll be all right now and we'll try to be friends again--I wasn't writing to any other girl." "Oh, weren't you?" she smiled. "Well, I'll kiss you, then--just once. But somehow, I'm afraid it won't last." CHAPTER XXVI THE CALL The long quarrel was over, they had made up--and kissed--and yet to Wiley it all seemed unreal. That is, all but the kiss. It was that, perhaps, which made the rest seem unreal, for it had changed the color of his life. Before, he had thought in terms of hard fact, but the kiss put a rainbow in the sky. It roused a great hope, a joy, an ecstasy, a sense of well-wishing for mankind; and yet it was only he who had changed. The world was the same; Samuel Blount was the same; and the miners, and Stiff Neck George. They were all there together in a rough-and-tumble fight to see who would get the Paymaster Mine and, even with the madness of her kiss in his soul, he pressed on towards the one, fixed goal.