somethin' fair to look upon--somethin' of my own!" She flung out her
arms suddenly like one being stifled. "Oh, I want somethin' that's fair
and clean!"

Again he felt her trembling. Again the path was rough, and having an
impulse of sympathy, he put his arm about her. In the world of leisure,
one might indulge in such considerateness, and he assumed it would not
he different with a miner's daughter. But then, when she was close to
him, he felt, rather than heard, a sob.

"Mary!" he whispered; and they stopped. Almost without realising it, he
put his other arm about her, and in a moment more he felt her warm
breath on his cheek, and she was trembling and shaking in his embrace.
"Joe! Joe!" she whispered. "_You_ take me away!"

She was a rose in a mining-camp, and Hal was deeply moved. The primrose
path of dalliance stretched fair before him, here in the soft summer
night, with a moon overhead which bore the same message as it bore in
the Italian gardens of the leisure-class. But not many minutes passed
before a cold fear began to steal over Hal. There was a girl at home,
waiting for him; and also there was the resolve which had been growing
in him since his coming to this place--a resolve to find some way of
compensation to the poor, to repay them for the freedom and culture he
had taken; not to prey upon them, upon any individual among them. There
were the Jeff Cottons for that!

"Mary," he pleaded, "we mustn't do this."

"Why not?"