with his manner toward other men, she knew that he was treating
Clay with unusual consideration. And this pleased her greatly,
for it justified her own interest in him. She regarded Clay as a
discovery of her own, but she was glad to have her opinion of him
shared by others.

Their coming was a great event in the history of the mines.
Kirkland, the foreman, and Chapman, who handled the
dynamite, Weimer, the Consul, and the native doctor, who cared
for the fever-stricken and the casualties, were all at the
station to meet them in the whitest of white duck and with a
bunch of ponies to carry them on their tour of inspection, and
the village of mudDcabins and zinc-huts that stood clear of the
bare sunbaked earth on whitewashed wooden piles was as clean as
Clay's hundred policemen could sweep it. Mr. Langham rode in
advance of the cavalcade, and the head of each of the different
departments took his turn in riding at his side, and explained
what had been done, and showed him the proud result. The village
was empty, except for the families of the native workmen and the
ownerless dogs, the scavengers of the colony, that snarled and
barked and ran leaping in front of the ponies' heads.

Rising abruptly above the zinc village, lay the first of the five
great hills, with its open front cut into great terraces, on
which the men clung like flies on the side of a wall, some of
them in groups around an opening, or in couples pounding a steel
bar that a fellow-workman turned in his bare hands, while others
gathered about the panting steam-drills that shook the solid rock
with fierce, short blows, and hid the men about them in a
throbbing curtain of steam. Self-important little dummy-