"Tom Reade, I believe you're turning gambler at heart!"
"I intend to be a good, game business man, if that's what you mean by gambling. But see here, Harry, I don't want to pull your money into this scheme if you feel that you'd rather hold on to what you have."
"If you're going to stay in, Tom, then so am I. I'm not the kind of fellow to go back on a chum's investment."
"But if we lose all we've saved then you'll feel——-"
"Don't argue any more, Tom," begged Hazelton. "I'm going to be game. You've voted, old fellow, to stay by this claim as long as you can, and that's enough for me."
"But if we lose all our savings," Tom urged. He had now become the cautious one.
"If we lose them, we lose them," declared Hazelton. "And we're both of us young enough to be able to save more before we're seventy-five or eighty years old. Go ahead, Tom. I'm one of the investors here, but the whole game is in your hands. Go as far as you like and I'll stand back of you."
"But——-"
"Say no more. Tom, I shall try never again to be a quitter. Whoop! Let the money slip! We'll make the old mine a dividend payer before we are through with it."
That afternoon about a dozen and a half more blasts were laid and fired. Some five hundred feet of the surface of the vein had been lightly blasted, and several tons of ore thrown up.