The girl covered her mistake promptly with a little laugh.  It would never do for him to know she had been yielding to incipient jealousy.  “Why can’t I know them?  I want to meet her too.”

The door opened and a curly head was thrust in.  “Dining-room closes for breakfast at nine.  My clock says it’s ten-thirty now.  Pretty near work to keep eating that long, ain’t it?  And this Sunday, too!  I’ll have you put in the calaboose for breaking the Sabbath.”

“We’re only bending it,” grinned Neill.  “Good mo’ning, Lieutenant.  How is Mrs. Collins, and the pickaninnies?”

“First rate.  Waiting in the parlor to be introduced to Miss Kinney.”

“We’re through,” announced Margaret, rising.

“You too, Tennessee?  The proprietor will be grateful.”

The young women took to each other at once.  Margaret was very fond of children, and the little boy won her heart immediately.  Both he and his baby sister were well-trained, healthy, and lovable little folks, and they adopted “Aunt Peggy” enthusiastically.

Presently the ranger proposed to Neill an adjournment.

“I got to take some breakfast down the Jackrabbit shaft to my prisoner.  Wanter take a stroll that way?” he asked.

“If the ladies will excuse us.”

“Glad to get rid of you,” Miss Kinney assured him promptly, but with a bright smile that neutralized the effect of her sauciness.  “Mrs. Collins and I want to have a talk.”

The way to the Jackrabbit lay up a gulch behind the town.  Up one incline was a shaft-house with a great gray dump at the foot of it.  This they left behind them, climbing the hill till they came to the summit.

The ranger pointed to another shaft-house and dump on the next hillside.

“That’s the Mal Pais, from which the district is named.  Dunke owns it and most of the others round here.  His workings and ours come together in several places, but we have boarded up the tunnels at those points and locked the doors we put in.  Wonder where Brown is?  I told him to meet me here to let us down.”

At this moment they caught sight of him coming up a timbered draw.  He lowered them into the shaft, which was about six hundred feet deep.  From the foot of the shaft went a tunnel into the heart of the mountain.  Steve led the way, flashing an electric searchlight as he went.

“We aren’t working this part of the mine any more,” he explained.  “It connects with the newer workings by a tunnel.  We’ll go back that way to the shaft.”

“You’ve got quite a safe prison,” commented the other.

“It’s commodious, anyhow; and I reckon it’s safe.  If a man was to get loose he couldn’t reach the surface without taking somebody into partner-ship with him.  There ain’t but three ways to daylight; one by the shaft we came down, another by way of our shaft-house, and the third by Dunke’s, assuming he could break through into the Mal Pais.  He’d better not break loose and go to wandering around.  There are seventeen miles of workings down here in the Jackrabbit, let alone the Mal Pais.  He might easily get lost and starve to death.  Here he is at the end of this tunnel.”