"I'm Bells Park," he said. "Bells Park, the engineer. Maybe you've heard of me? Eh? What? No? Well, I used to have the engines here at the Cross eight or ten years ago, and I've come to take 'em again. When do I go to work? They hates me around here. They drove me out once. I said I'd come back. I'm here. I'm a union man, but I tell 'em what I think of 'em, and it don't set well. When did you say I go to work?" "I'm afraid you don't go," Dick answered regretfully. The Cross, so far as he could conjecture, would never again ring with the sounds of throbbing engines. Already he was more than half-convinced that he should write to Sloan and reject his kindly offer of support. "We've been here but a week, but it doesn't look promising to us." "Well, then you're a pair of fools!" came the disrespectful and irascible retort. "They told me down in Goldpan that some miners had come to open the Cross up again. You're not miners. I've hoofed it all the way up here for nothin'." The partners looked at each other, and grinned at the old man's tirade. He went on without noticing them, speaking of himself in the third person: "I can stay here to-night somewhere, can't I? Bells Park is askin' it. Bells Park that used to be chief in the Con and Virginia, and once had his own cabin here--cabin that was a home till his wife went away on the long trip. She's asleep up there under the cross mark on the hill. Bells Park as came back because he wanted to be near where she was put away! She was the best woman that ever lived. I'm looking for my old job back. I can sleep here, can't I?" His querulous question was more of a challenge than a request, and Dick hastened to assure him that he could unroll his blankets in a bunk in the rambling old structure that loomed dim, silent, and ghostly, on the hill beyond where they were seated. His pity and hospitality led him farther. "Had your supper?" he asked. Bells Park shook his head in negation. "Then you can share with us," Dick said, getting to his feet and entering the cabin from which in a few moments came a rattle of fire being replenished, a coffee-pot being refilled, and the crisp, frying note of sizzling bacon and eggs. "Who might that young feller be?" asked the engineer, glowering with sudden curiosity, after his long silence, into the face of the grizzled old prospector, who, in the interim, had sat quietly. "Him? That's Dick Townsend, half-owner in the mine," Bill replied. "Half owner? Cookin' for me? Why don't you do it? What right have you got sittin' here on your long haunches and lettin' a boss do the work? Hey? Who are you?" "I'm his superintendent," grinned Bill, appreciating the joke of being superintendent of a mine where no one worked. "Oh!" said the engineer. And then, after a pause, as if readjusting all these conditions to meet his approval: "Say, he's all right, ain't he!" "You bet your life!" came the emphatic response.