“I am sorry,” cried Jenks, desisting from further efforts, “that I have not recently read one of Bret Harte’s novels, or I would speak to you in the language of the mining camp.  But in plain Cockney, Miss Deane, we are on to a good thing if only we can keep it.”

They came back into the external glare.  Iris was now so serious that she forgot to extinguish the little lamp.  She stood with outstretched hand.

“There is a lot of money in there,” she said.

“Tons of it.”

“No need to quarrel about division.  There is enough for both of us.”

“Quite enough.  We can even spare some for our friends.”

He took so readily to this definition of their partnership that Iris suddenly became frigid.  Then she saw the ridiculous gleam of the tiny wick and blew it out.

“I mean,” she said, stiffly, “that if you and I do agree to go shares we will each be very rich.”

“Exactly.  I applied your words to the mine alone, of course.”

A slight thing will shatter a daydream.  This sufficed.  The sailor resumed his task of burying the stores.

“Poor little lamp!” he thought.  “When it came into the greater world how soon it was snuffed out.”

But Iris said to herself, “What a silly slip that was of mine!  Enough for both of us, indeed!  Does he expect me to propose to him?  I wonder what the letter was about which he destroyed as I came back after my bath.  It must have been meant for me.  Why did he write it?  Why did he tear it up?”

The hour drew near when Jenks climbed to the Summit Rock.  He shouldered axe and rifle and set forth.  Iris heard him rustling upwards through the trees.  She set some water to boil for tea, and, whilst bringing a fresh supply of fuel, passed the spot where the torn scraps of paper littered the sand.

She was the soul of honor, for a woman, but there was never a woman yet who could take her eyes off a written document which confronted her.  She could not help seeing that one small morsel contained her own name.  Though mutilated it had clearly read—­Miss Deane.”

“So it was intended for me!” she cried, throwing down her bundle and dropping to her knees.  She secured that particular slip and examined it earnestly.  Not for worlds would she pick up all the scraps and endeavor to sort them.  Yet they had a fascination for her, and at this closer range she saw another which bore the legend—­“I love you!”

Somehow the two seemed to fit together very nicely.

Yet a third carried the same words—­“I love you!” They were still quite coherent.  She did not want to look any further.  She did not even turn over such of the torn pieces as had fluttered to earth face downwards.

Opening the front of her bodice she brought to light a small gold locket containing miniatures of her father and mother.  Inside this receptacle she carefully placed the three really material portions of the sailor’s letter.  When Jenks walked down the hill again he heard her singing long before he caught sight of her, sedulously tending the fire.