Particularly was he kind to those outcasts from human sympathy—the murderers. So far did he carry this branch of his charity that the authorities ventured to remonstrate with the great man one day, telling him that he was putting a premium on the horrible crime. They never forgot the look that came over the beneficent Mr. Joseph Westbrook’s face as he turned and walked away. It was on that night that the servants said he sat up until morning in his library, raging around the room like some mad creature, so that they were all afraid, and one came and listened at the door. There he heard his master cry out: “My God—is it not enough? Is there no atonement—no peace?” Then there was a long, quivering sigh, and a noise as of a clinched hand striking the desk, and a low muttered, “Oh, the pitiless God of Justice!” In the morning Westbrook left the house before breakfast and boarded the eight o’clock train for Skinner Valley. XVI Westbrook had gone back to Skinner Valley for a talk with Pedler Joe, having it in his mind to tell the little hunchback his life story as that of a friend of his and so get the benefit of sound advice without quite betraying his secret. But the door opened suddenly and Bill Somers burst into the store. “There’s another blow-up at the mine!” he gasped thickly. “An’ the old man’s daughter—she——” “What old man’s daughter?” demanded Westbrook, his lips white. “She—Barrington’s girl—is down there in that hell! She went in with her friends at two o’clock. They——” “Which entrance?” thundered Westbrook, with his hand on the door. “Beachmont! They——” Westbrook dashed down the steps and across the sidewalk, whipped out his knife and cut loose a horse from the shafts of a wagon in front of the store. The next moment he had mounted the animal and was urging it into a mad run toward the Beachmont entrance of the Candria mine. Again did he face a crowd of weeping women and children crazed with terror; but this time there stood among them the bowed form of the great mine-king himself. John Barrington’s lips were stern and set, and only his eyes spoke as he grasped Westbrook’s hand. Once more did a band of heroic men work their way bit by bit into the mine, fighting the damp at every turn under Westbrook’s directions. Barrington had looked at the preparations in amazement. “How comes it that this Westbrook, this millionaire, knows the mine so well?” he stammered. A woman standing near—Bill Somers’s wife—answered him. “That’s Hustler Joe, sir,” she said softly. Hustler Joe! John Barrington drew a deep breath as the memories of the Bonanza catastrophe came to him. “Thank God for Hustler Joe!” he breathed fervently. “If anyone can save my little girl, ’tis he!” “You’re right, sir—an’ he’ll do it, too,” returned the little woman, her eyes full of unshed tears. XVII