Bartrow pulled his hat over his eyes and enveloped himself in a cloud of smoke. "When you're ready to fold up your ears and be human people again, just let me know, will you?" This from the midst of the smoke-cloud. "Don't sulk, my Achilles; you shall have your Briseis,--if you can get her," laughed Lansdale. "Miss Van Vetter hasn't made a confidant of me, but I'll tell you a lot of encouraging little fibs, if that will help you." Bartrow fanned an opening in the tobacco-nimbus. "What do you think about it?" "I think I should find out for myself, if I were you," said Lansdale, with becoming gravity. "I don't believe you would." "Why?" "Miss Van Vetter is rich." "And Mr. Richard Bartrow is only potentially so. That is a most excellent reason, but I shouldn't let it overweigh common sense. From what Miss Elliott has said I infer that her cousin's fortune is not large enough to overawe the owner of a promising mine." Bartrow's chair righted itself with a crash. "That's the devil of it, Lansdale; that's just what scares me out. I've been pecking away in the Myriad for a year and a half now, and we're in something over four hundred feet--in rock, not ore. If we don't strike pay in the immediate hence I'm a ruined community. I've borrowed right and left, and piled up debt enough to keep me in a cold sweat for the next ten years. That's the chilly fact, and I leave it to you if I hadn't better take the night train and skip out for Topeka Mountain without going near Steve Elliott's." The red-badges were passing again, and Lansdale took time to consider it. The appeal threw a new side-light on the character of the young miner, and Lansdale made mental apologies for having misjudged him. When he replied it was out of the heart of sincerity. "It's a hard thing to say, but if you have stated the case impartially, I don't know but you would better do just that, Dick. From what I have seen of Miss Van Vetter, I should hazard a guess that the success or failure of the Little Myriad wouldn't move her a hair's-breadth, but that isn't what you have to consider." "No." Bartrow said it from the teeth outward, looking at his watch. "It's tough, but I guess you're right. I can just about make it if I get a quick move. Will you go down to the train with me?" Lansdale assented, and they walked the few squares to the Union Depot in silence. The narrow-gauge train was coupled and ready to leave, and Bartrow tossed his handbag to the porter of the sleeping-car. "You're a cold-blooded beggar, do you know it?" he said, turning upon Lansdale with as near an approach to petulance as his invincible good-nature would sanction. "Here I've lost a whole day and ridden a hundred and fifty miles just to get a sight of her, and now you won't let me have it." Lansdale laughed and promptly evaded the responsibility. "Don't lay it on my shoulders; I have sins enough of my own to answer for. It's a little hard, as you say, but it is your own suggestion."