"Not doing this," he said, "I'm a driller, you know, and I like to keep my hand in. I compete in these rock-drilling contests." "Oh, yes, father was telling me," she answered quickly. "That's where you won all that money--the money to buy the mine." "Yes, and I've won other money before," he boasted. "I won first place last year in the single-handed contest--but that's too hard on your arm. You change about, you know, in the double-handed work--one strikes while the other turns--but in single jacking it's just hammer, hammer, hammer, until your arm gets dead to the shoulder." "It must be nice," she suggested with a half-concealed sigh, "to be able to make money so easily. Have you always been a miner?" "No, I was raised on a ranch, up in Colorado--but there's lots more money in mining. I don't work by the day, I take contracts by the foot where there's difficult or dangerous work. Sometimes I make forty dollars a day. There's a knack about mining, like everything else--you've got to know just how to drive your holes in order to break the most ground--but give me a jack-hammer and enough men to muck out after me and I can sink from sixteen to twenty feet a day, depending on the rock. But here, of course, I'm working lone-handed and only make about three feet a day." "Oh," she murmured with a mild show of interest and Denver picked up his hammer. Mother Trigedgo had warned him not to be too friendly, and now he was learning why. He set out a huge fragment that had been blasted from the face and swung his hammer again. "Did you ever hear the 'Anvil Chorus'?" she asked watching him curiously. "It's in the second act of 'Il Trovatore.'" "Sure!" exclaimed Denver, "I heard Sousa's band play it! I've got it on a record somewhere." "No, but in a real opera--you'd be fine for that part. They have a row of anvils around the back of the stage and as the chorus sing the gypsy blacksmiths beat out the time by striking with their hammers. Back in New York last year there was a perfectly huge man and he had a hammer as big as yours that he swung with both hands while he sang. You reminded me of him when I saw you working--don't you get kind of lonely, sometimes?" "Too busy," replied Denver turning to pick up another rock, "don't have time for anything like that." "Well, I wish I was that way," she sighed after a silence and Denver smote ponderously at the rock. "Why don't you work?" he asked at last and Drusilla's eyes flashed fire. "I do!" she cried, "I work all the time! But that doesn't do me any good. It's all right, perhaps, if you're just breaking rocks, or digging dirt in some mine; but I'm trying to become a singer and you can't succeed that way--work will get you only so far!" "'S that so!" murmured Denver, and at the unspoken challenge the brooding resentment of Drusilla burst forth.