His clothes had been hung on the last of a line of pegs along the wall. To this he went, and, ignorant of the fact that Jerry had undressed after him, thrust his hand into the pocket of what he thought was his own coat. Instead of the stone his fingers encountered a letter. He drew it out and saw that it was the one he had seen handed to his son-in-law a few hours before. At once he drew the paper from the envelope. No qualm of conscience deterred him; instead he experienced a sense of satisfaction that his uncertainty should be thus simply brought to an end. His eye traveled over the few lines, instantly grasping their meaning. He knew the signature. Jerry was not intriguing with a common woman of the town; he was deserting his wife with a girl, hitherto of unspotted reputation, and for years beloved by Rion. It meant ruin and misery for the two human beings nearest to the bonanza king’s heart. For a moment he stood motionless, the letter in his hand, and before his eyes he saw red. Then it cleared away. He put the paper back in its envelope and thrust it in his pocket. When he came out into the shaft house Barney Sullivan noticed that his face was reddened and that the whites of his eyes were slightly bloodshot. One of the strangers rallied him on his absence, which had been of some minutes’ duration, and he made no answer, simply motioning them to get on the cage with an imperious movement of his head. The shaft of the Cresta Plata was over two thousand feet in depth, and the heat of the lower levels was terrific. Here the miners, naked, save for a cap, breechclout, and canvas shoes, worked twenty-minute shifts, unable to stand the fiery atmosphere for longer. Cold air was pumped down to them from the surface, the pipes that carried it following the roofs of the long, dark tunnels, their mouths blowing life-giving coolness into stopes where the men could not touch their metal candlesticks, and the iron of the picks grew hot. There were places where the drops that fell from the roof raised blisters on the backs they touched. On most of these lower levels there was much water, its temperature sometimes boiling. The miners of the Cresta Plata had a saying that no man had ever fallen into water that reached to his hips and lived. At the bottom of the shaft--the “sump” in mining parlance--was a well of varying depths which perpetually exhaled a scalding steam.