"What think you he will do?" asked Browning.

"If he believes it safe, and the right kink is on him, he will draw our
money and buy us some stock," said Sedgwick. "He made his money that way,
and it is not long since he was a timberman on this same lode."

"Why not word it differently, and ask him squarely to buy the stock?"
asked Browning.

"Why, Jack," was the reply, "that would be a dead give-away. He would
never present such an order at the bank. It would be a notice to every
man in the bank and every friend of every man in the bank, and that would
mean everybody in town, that the miners who were kept down in the deeps
were trying to buy the stock of the mine. I would rather risk it this
way."

"All right, everything goes," said Browning, and both signed the order.

Then they talked for a long time. They had known each other slightly for
a couple of years, having met first in the Belcher lower levels, and
being thrown together in work on the face of the drift from the G. & C.
shaft, they had, during the previous few days, each found that the other
was a good and bright man, and had grown more and more intimate, and a
warm friendship had sprung up between them. As they lay down again,
Browning said to Sedgwick, "How did you come to be here, Jim?"

"Fate arranged it, I guess," was the reply. "You see, my home was
in Ohio, in the valley of the Miami. My father had a big farm--400
acres--but there were two boys older than myself, and they needed the