"Near yours?" she queried.
Ford stopped to consider. "To tell the truth, I don't know where mine is," he confessed. "I bought it as the school-boys trade pocket-knives—sight unseen. You wouldn't believe it of a grown man, would you?"
"What made you buy it at all?"
Again he told the simple truth—and tried not to flinch.
"You won't mind if I say that the name attracted me? I thought a mine, or anything, that bore your name, ought to be good and—and desirable. And it is a good mine; or it will be, by and by. Some morning I shall wake up and find myself rich. At least that is what my partner, Grigsby, assures me; and I believe him when I happen to remember it."
She neither approved nor disapproved. When she spoke, it was of the present necessity. "We must go back to the others now," she said. "Or at least I must. Do you know what is to be done to-day?"
Ford spread his hands.
"Your uncle will set the pace. I wouldn't venture a guess, after last night."
He was handing her down from the engine step and she went back in a word to the former contention.
"You haven't promised me yet that you will not resign under fire—you are under fire, you know."