eyes.  "That is hardly fair or civil. You really looked so—and how was I to know?" 

 Geoffrey's pulse beat faster, and the smile faded out of his eyes as he noticed, for the moon was high, the trace of faintly heightened color in the speaker's face. 

 "I doubtless looked the hungry, worn-out tramp I was," he interposed gravely.  "And out of gentle compassion, you offered me a dollar. Well, I earned that dollar, and I have it still. It has brought me good luck, and I will keep it as a talisman." 

 Instinctively his fingers slid to one end of a thin gold chain, and for a moment a look of consternation came into his face, for the links hung loose; then as the hard hand dropped to his pocket, he looked relieved and Helen found it judicious to watch a gray blur of shadow moving across the snow. She had sometimes wondered what he wore at one end of that cross-pattern chain, for rock cutters do not usually adorn themselves with such trinkets, but, remembering Bransome's comments, she now understood what had happened just before the explosion. Geoffrey's quick eyes had noticed something unusual in her air, and his old reckless spirit, breaking through all restraint, prompted him to say: 

 "It will, I fancy, still bring me good fortune. I come of a superstitious race, and nothing would tempt me to part with it. This, as I said, is only the beginning. It appeared impossible to move the boulder from your wagon trail, and I did it. The neighbors declared nobody could drain Bransome's prairie, and a number of goodly acres are drying now, while to-night I feel it may be possible to go on and on, until——" 

 "Does not that sound somewhat egotistical?" interposed Helen. 

 "Horribly," said Thurston, with a curious smile.  "But you see I am trusting in the talisman, and some day I may ask you to admit that I have made it good. I'm not avaricious, and desire money only as means to an end. Dollars! If all goes well, the contract for the wagon road rock work should bring me in a good many of them." 

 "You are refreshingly certain," averred Helen.  "But will the end or dominant purpose justify all this?" 

 Thurston answered quietly: 

 "I may ask you to judge that, also, some day!" 

 Helen was conscious of a chagrin quite unusual to her. Hitherto, she had experienced little difficulty in 

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