As he walked he pieced together what he had just heard with what he knew already. One hour before the dinner to the Easterners--at which he was expected--Jerry had arranged to leave the town, driving into Reno with some companion. The companion and the gray note instantly connected themselves in Black Dan’s mind. He felt as certain as a man could be without absolute confirmation that Jerry was driving in with a woman. The daring insolence of it made the blood, which moved slowly in the morose and powerful man, rise to his head. Could it be possible that Jerry, on the way to see his wife, was going to stop over in Reno with some woman of the Virginia streets? Black Dan’s swarthy skin was slightly flushed when he reached the office. He said nothing to Jerry as he passed his desk. In his own private office he sat still, staring in front of him at the geological map hanging on the wall. He was slow to wrath, but his wrath, like his love, once roused was of a primitive intensity. As he sat staring at the map his anger gathered and grew. At four o’clock the eastern party and their guides were due to meet in the hoisting works for their excursion down the mine. It was nearly a half-hour later, however, when the two ladies, who made up the feminine portion of the party, slunk out of the spacious dressing-rooms, giggling and blushing in their male attire. Jerry, Marsden the foreman, and one of the shift bosses, were lounging about the mouth of the shaft waiting for them. There were greetings and laughter, the women hugging themselves close in the long overcoats they wore against the chill of the downward passage, and pulling over their hair the shapeless cloth caps they had been given for head-gear. Through the wide opening that led to the dumps the figure of Black Dan, dark against the brilliance of the afternoon, could be seen walking on the car tracks with the rest of the party. In the muddy overalls, long boots and soft felt hat which was the regulation underground dress of the men, he presented the appearance of some black-browed, heavily bearded pirate in the garb of a tramp. As the cage slid up to the shaft mouth, he entered the building, gave the embarrassed women an encouraging nod, and selected a lantern from a collection of them standing in a corner. With little cries of apprehension the women stepped on the flat square of flooring, their three escorts ranged closely round them, the signal to descend, was given, and the cage dropped quickly out of sight into the steaming depths. Black Dan, Barney Sullivan and the strangers were to descend on the cage in the next compartment, and while they waited for it to come up, stood talking of the formations of the mineral, how it had been found and of the varying richness of the ore-bodies. Suddenly Black Dan thought of his specimen, which had come from a part of the mine they were to visit first, and turning went into the men’s dressing-room, where he had left it in his coat pocket.