“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 known him abuse their confidence.

“Yes,” he said at length.  “I think it’s silver.  Traces of lead, and perhaps copper, too; you seldom find silver pure.  But won’t you go on with the tale?”

“The party’s food was getting short.  That meant they would starve if they did not reach the factory soon, and they set off again at dawn.  There was no time to prospect and deep snow covered the ground, but my father made what he called a mental photograph of the spot.  It was a little hollow among the rocks, with a willow grove by the creek, and in the middle there were two or three burned pines.  If you drew a line through them it pointed nearly north, and where it touched the cliff you turned east about twenty yards.”

“Aren’t you rash to tell me this?” Thirlwell asked.

Agatha smiled.  “On the whole, I think not; but nothing I could tell would be of much use to you.  My father, although he had been there, could not find the spot again.”

She paused a moment and then went on:  “When they reached the factory he showed the specimens to the agent, who said they were worthless and laughed at him.  But it was perhaps significant that he was not sent that way again.  One understands that the Hudson’s Bay directors were jealous of their game preserves.”

“Furs paid better than silver,” Thirlwell agreed.  “They didn’t want miners with dynamite and noisy machines to invade the solitudes and frighten the wild animals away.”