He slammed the door just in time to prevent a cup from flying straight into his smiling eyes. After a moment of silent laughter, and with a wink at the men in the "office," he reopened the door and said: "Ye're a warm-hearted, handsome girl, Maggie. Two strips o' bacon--" A muffled cry and a crash caused him to again slam the door and withdraw. Coming back to the middle of the room, he took out his pipe and began to fill it. One of the younger men said: "You'll get that grub-stake over the eye; the widdy is dangerous to-night." Sherm seemed not much concerned. Having fired his pipe, he took a piece of rock from his pocket. "What do you think o' this?" he inquired, casually. The other examined it eagerly, and broke out: "Jee--cripes! Why, say! that's jest _rotten_ with gold. Where'd you find it?" "Out in the hills," was the placid reply; "a new vein--high up." The third man took the rock and said: "That vein has got to be low down--that can't come from high up. We're on the wrong trail. Think o' Cripple Creek--mine's right under the grass on the hills. Yer can't fool me." "But we know the veins are high--we've seen 'em," argued the other men. "Yes--but they're different veins. This rock comes from lower down." "What do you say to that, Sherm?" "One guess is as good as another," he replied, and moved away with his piece of ore. "The old man's mighty fly this evenin'. I wonder if he really has trailed that float to a standstill. I'd sooner think he's stringin' us." Bidwell went out on the edge of the ravine, and for a long time sat on a rock, listening to the roar of the swift stream and looking up at the peaks which were still covered with heavy yellow snow, stained with the impalpable dust which the winter winds had rasped from the exposed ledges of rock. It was chill in the canyon, and the old man shivered with cold as well as with a sense of discouragement. For twenty years he had regularly gone down into the valleys in winter to earn money with which to prospect in summer--all to no purpose. For years Margaret Delaney had been his very present help in time of trouble, and now she had broken with him, and under his mask of smiling incredulity he carried a profoundly disturbed conscience. His benefactress was in deadly earnest--she meant every word she said--that he felt, and unless she relented he was lost, for he had returned from the valley this time without a dollar to call his own. He had a big, strong mule and some blankets and a saddle--nothing further.