"But it's so odd; a myriad is many, and a mine is only one." "Oh, the meaning didn't have anything to do with it," rejoined Bartrow, going straight to his own discomfiture with refreshing candor. "It was the--the suggestion; the similarity; the--By Jove! we're there at last; this is the mine switch." The exclamation was a heartfelt thanksgiving, and in the confusion of debarking the perilous topic was safely eluded. It was a sharp climb of some distance from the railway track to the mine, and Elliott developed unsuspected reserves of tact by leading the way with Miss Van Vetter, leaving Bartrow to follow with Constance. When they had lagged sufficiently behind the others, and were yet out of earshot of the men who were following with the luggage, Bartrow went back to the unexploded petard. "Connie, you've just got to help me out now," he declared. "What shall I tell her if she tackles me again?" "Tell her the truth." "I don't dare to." "Then tell her a fib. But no--on second thought I shouldn't do that, if I were you; you'd only make a mess of it. I'll tell you what to do: just fight shy of it till I can get her to myself. I promise you she'll never ask you about the Little Myriad's christening again as long as she lives." "Thank you," said Bartrow, with the air of a reprieved criminal; and then dubiously: "See here, Connie, how are you going to do it? No monkey business, you know." "Not a single, solitary monkey," she answered so soberly that Bartrow forgot his suspicions, and plunged into another subject which was also near to his heart. "About Jeffard; how did you come to think he had shot himself?" "It was only one of those suppositions you think you have verified when you've only been playing blind-man's bluff with it. The similarity of names misled me at first." "But afterward you merely wired that you were mistaken. Was that another supposition?" "Oh, no; I saw him and talked with him." "The mischief you did! What did he have to say for himself?" "Not much that will bear repeating. I'm too sorry for him to want to talk about it, Dick." Bartrow wondered, and kept his wonder to himself. What he said was in the nature of worldly wisdom. "Jeffard'll come out all right in the end. He's as obstinate as a pig, but that's the only swinish thing about him. I'm afraid he'll have to go through the stamp-mill and get himself pulverized; but when it comes to the clean-up there'll be more good metal than tailings. Don't you think so?" "How should I know?" queried Constance. "I didn't ask you what you know; I asked what you thought about it." "You forget that we've met only two or three times." "I don't forget anything. But I know you can size a man up while the rest of us are trying to get acquainted with him. Don't you believe that Jeffard will come out all right in the end?" She was silent for a minute or two, and when she answered there was a tremulous note in her voice which was new to Bartrow.