"I'm not a gold-miner, my dear," said Bradley, pleasantly.

"Nor a gold-finder," returned his wife, with a cruel little depression
of her pink nostrils, "but you can work all night in that stupid mill
and then," she added in a low voice, to escape Minty's attention, "spend
the whole of the next day examining and following up a boy's discovery
that his own relations had been too lazy and too ignorant to understand
and profit by. I suppose that next you will be hunting up a site on the
OTHER SIDE of the Canyon, where somebody else can put up a hotel and
ruin your own prospects."

A sensitive shadow of pain quickly dimmed Bradley's glance--not the
first or last time evidently, for it was gradually bringing out a
background of sadness in his intelligent eyes. But the next moment he
turned kindly to Mainwaring, and began to deplore the necessity of his
early departure, which Richardson had already made known to him with
practical and satisfying reasons.

"I hope you won't forget, my dear fellow, that your most really urgent
business is to look after your health; and if, hereafter, you'll only
remember the old Lookout enough to impress that fact upon you, I shall
feel that any poor service I have rendered you has been amply repaid."

Mainwaring, notwithstanding that he winced slightly at this fateful
echo of Louise's advice, returned the grasp of his friend's hand with an
honest pressure equal to his own. He longed now only for the coming of
Richardson, to complete his scheme of grateful benefaction to his host.

The banker came fortunately as the conversation began to flag; and Mrs.