As they stood to watch the train climb the hill, Morse drew a deep sigh and said: "Gee! but Flo is keen! I thought one while she was going to get my goat. I wonder what made her change her mind all of a sudden?" Kelley looked down at him somberly. "I did." "You did? How?" "I told her what you had really been working at." The boy staggered under the force of this. "Holy smoke! Did you do that?" "Sure I did. It was the only way to save that dear old mother of yours. I told your sister also that I was going to stop your white-marble exercise, and I'm going to do it if I have to break your back." There was no mistaking the sincerity and determination of Kelley's tone, and the young man, so far from resenting these qualities, replied, meekly: "I want to get out of it, Ed. I've been saying all day that I must quit it. But what can I do?" "I'll tell you my plan," said Kelley, with decision. "You've got to buy my interest in the mine." Morse laughed. "But I haven't any money. I haven't three hundred dollars in the world." "I'll take your note, provided your sister will indorse it, and she will." The young fellow looked up at his tall friend in amazement which turned at last into amusement. He began to chuckle. "Good Lord! I knew you'd made a mash on Flo, but I didn't know it was mutual. I heard her say, 'be sure and write.'" He slapped Kelley on the back. "There'll be something doing when she comes back in the spring, eh?" Kelley remained unmoved. "There will be if she finds you rolling that white marble." "She won't. I'll take your offer. But what will you be doing?" "Climbing some Alaska trail," replied Kelley, with a remote glance. THE PROSPECTOR _--still pushes his small pack-mule through the snow of glacial passes seeking the unexplored, and therefore more alluring, mountain range._ VI THE PROSPECTOR Old Pogosa was seated in the shade of a farm-wagon, not far from the trader's store at Washakie, eating a cracker and mumbling to herself, when a white man in miner's dress spoke to her in a kindly voice and offered her an orange. She studied him with a dim, shining, suspicious gaze, but took the orange. Eugene, the grandson of her niece, stood beside the stranger, and he, too, had an orange. "Tell her," said the white man, "that I want to talk with her about old days; that I am a friend of her people, and that I knew Sitting Bull and Bear Robe. They were great chiefs." As these words were interpreted to the old witch, her mouth softened a little and, raising her eyes, she studied her visitor intently. At last she said: "Ay, he was a great chief, Sitting Bull. My cousin. I came to visit Shoshoni many moons ago. Never returned to my own people." To this the miner replied, "They say your husband, Iapi, was one of the sheep-eaters exiled to the mountains?"