was always to be this way with him, he found, and he had to make the
best of it. The dining-room of this boarding-house, owned and managed by
the G. F. C., brought to his mind the state prison, which he had once
visited--with its rows of men sitting in silence, eating starch and
grease out of tin-plates. The plates here were of crockery half an inch
thick, but the starch and grease never failed; the formula of
Reminitsky's cook seemed to be, When in doubt add grease, and boil it
in. Even ravenous as Hal was after his long tramp and his labour below
ground, he could hardly swallow this food. On Sundays, the only time he
ate by daylight, the flies swarmed over everything, and he remembered
having heard a physician say that an enlightened man should be more
afraid of a fly than of a Bengal tiger. The boarding-house provided him
with a cot and a supply of vermin, but with no blanket, which was a
necessity in the mountain regions. So after supper he had to seek out
his boss, and arrange to get credit at the company-store. They were
willing to give a certain amount of credit, he found, as this would
enable the camp-marshal to keep him from straying. There was no law to
hold a man for debt--but Hal knew by this time how much a camp-marshal
cared for law.



SECTION 6.

For three days Hal toiled in the bowels of the mine, and ate and pursued
vermin at Reminitsky's. Then came a blessed Sunday, and he had a couple
of free hours to see the sunlight and to get a look at the North Valley
camp. It was a village straggling along more than a mile of the mountain
canyon. In the centre were the great breaker-buildings, the shaft-house,
and the power-house with its tall chimneys; nearby were the