In the course of this same morning, Lafond had discovered an old acquaintance. He arose early, and spent some time after breakfast investigating and criticising the premises. Frosty's administration had, it must be confessed, been rather slack, and there were many loose ends. These Black Mike gathered into a cat o' nine tails with which to lash his subordinate. After he had done more for Frosty's character in sixty minutes than that young man, unaided, could have accomplished in as many months, he left the scene of his reorganizations behind, and strolled about in the one narrow street of the village. He soon saw all there was to be seen there. With a vague idea of finding his way to the famous Great Snake Mine, he rambled out from the double row of log cabins, around the bend, and into the lower gulch. He had defined to himself two things very clearly--that Billy Knapp was now easily the most important figure in the community, and that a continuance of this importance depended entirely on his effecting a combination of his group of claims with Eastern capital. In the Black Hills nearly all of the promising leads are of quartz, requiring in their development more expensive machinery than any ordinary man is able to afford. Until the good angel arrives, they are so much crumbling red rock or white crystal; but with the erection of a stamp mill, within wagon distance, they become valuable. Mike had set himself to the task of depriving Billy Knapp at once of his property and of his prestige; but since he could not hold him up at the point of a pistol, as might have been done had it been the question of a watch or a scarf-pin, he did not at present see just how it was to be accomplished. Ruminating these matters, he found himself all at once in a cañon much grown with underbrush, full of birds, and possessing a general air of the gentler aspects of nature. Immediately before him stood a double cabin, its two parts connected by a passage way. The foundations of its timbers were encircled by broad bands of red geraniums. Behind the buildings, chained to posts, he perceived three wild animals. One was a short, comical, and shaggy bear; the second, an equally furry but more eager-looking raccoon; the third, a bobcat with tasselled ears. Mike paused and surveyed them with amusement. As he stood there the door of the cabin opened and the owner stepped out into the sunshine. The half-breed never forgot a face which a vital incident had impressed on his memory; and though this old, white-haired, mild-eyed man had passed in and out of his life in the space of one evening fifteen years ago, Lafond recognized without difficulty the stranger whose words had given him so powerful an impetus toward his new way of life. It was Durand, the butterfly hunter.