"I imagine you are cautious. In fact, you are rather like the picture I
made of you after reading your letters."

Thirlwell felt embarrassed and said nothing, as was his prudent rule
when his thoughts were not clear.

"My father found the ore many years since, when he was employed by the
Hudson's Bay Company," she resumed. "The factory was in the Territories,
three or four hundred miles north of your mine, and the agent sent him
out, with a dog-train and two Indians, to collect some furs. They had to
make a long journey, and were coming back, short of food, when they
camped one evening beside a frozen creek. The water had worn away the
face of a small cliff, and the frost had recently split off a large
slab. That left the strata cleanly exposed, and my father noticed that
near the foot of the rock there was a different-colored band. They were
making camp in the snow then, but he went back afterwards when the moon
rose and the Indians were asleep, and broke off a number of bits. The
stones were unusually heavy. Doesn't that mean something?"

"Silver has a high specific gravity; so has lead. Sometimes one finds
them combined."

"I have a piece here," said Agatha, taking out a small packet. "My
father gave it me when I was a child, and I brought it, thinking I
might, perhaps, show it to you."

Thirlwell, examining the specimen, missed something of her meaning, and
did not see that her decision to show him the ore was a compliment. He
looked honest, and strangers often trusted him. His friends had never