up the ravine and camp out all night, and the back of this yer hut
shriveled up like that bacon. It was about as nigh on to hell as any
sample ye kin get here. Now, mebbe you think I built that air fire?
Mebbe you'll allow the heat was just the nat'ral burning of that pit?"

"Certainly," said Lance, trying to see Flip's eyes, which were
resolutely averted.

"Thet's whar you'd be lyin'! That yar heat kem out of the bowels of the
yearth,--kem up like out of a chimbley or a blast, and kep up that yar
fire. And when she cools down a month after, and I got to strip her,
there was a hole in the yearth, and a spring o' bilin', scaldin' water
pourin' out of it ez big as your waist. And right in the middle of it
was this yer." He rose with the instinct of a skillful raconteur, and
whisked from under his bunk a chamois leather bag, which he emptied
on the table before them. It contained a small fragment of native rock
crystal, half-fused upon a petrified bit of pine. It was so glaringly
truthful, so really what it purported to be, that the most unscientific
woodman or pioneer would have understood it at a glance. Lance raised
his mirthful eyes to Flip.

"It was cooled suddint,--stunted by the water," said the girl, eagerly.
She stopped, and as abruptly turned away her eyes and her reddened face.

"That's it, that's just it," continued the old man. "Thar's Flip, thar,
knows it; she ain't no fool!" Lance did not speak, but turned a hard,
unsympathizing look upon the old man, and rose almost roughly. The old
man clutched his coat. "That's it, ye see. The carbon's just turning to
di'mens. And stunted. And why? 'Cos the heat wasn't kep up long enough.
Mebbe yer think I stopped thar? That ain't me. Thar's a pit out yar in