"What is that?"
"That is, they agreed to furnish me food and money for tools and share in profits. Dan went to work with me, and do you know, it ended in ruining them both. We organized a company called the 'Biddy Mining Company.' I was president, and Dan was vice-president, and Biddy was treasurer. Biddy kept us going by her eating-house, but eventually we wanted machinery, and we mortgaged the eating-house, and the money went into that hole in the ground. But I knew we would succeed. I could hear voices call me, 'Come, come!'—whenever I was alone I could hear them plainly."
His eyes, turned upon her, were full of mystery.
"I have always felt the stir of life around me in the dark, and there in that mine—after we struck the spring of water—I thought I heard voices all the time in the plash of the water. I suppose it seemed like insanity, for I ruined Dan and Biddy without mercy. I couldn't stop. I was sure if we could only hold out a little while we would reach it. But we didn't. Biddy had to go to work as a cook, and Dan and I went out to try to borrow some money. I couldn't bear to let in somebody else after all the heat and toil Dan and Biddy and I had endured, but it had to be done. We took in a fellow from Iowa by the name of Eldred and went to work again.
"One day after our blast I was the first to enter, and the moment that I saw the heap of rock I knew we had opened the vein. My wildest dreams were realized!"
"And then your troubles ended," the girl said tenderly.
"No—for now a strange thing happened. The assayer tried our ore again and again and found it very rich, but when we shipped to the mills we got almost no returns. We tried every process, but the gold seemed to slip away from us. Finally I took a carload and went with it to see what was the matter. I followed it till it came out on the plates—that is where they catch the gold by the use of quicksilver spread on copper plates—and it seemed all right. I scraped some of it up and put it into a small vial to take home with me. When I got home the company assembled to hear my report, and when I took out the amalgam to show it to them it had turned to a queer yellow-green liquid. I was astounded, but Dan and Biddy crossed themselves. 'It's witch's gold,' Biddy said. 'Dan, have no more to do with it.' And witch's gold it was. They gave up right there and went back to work in the camp. Eldred cursed me for getting him into it, and so they left me to fight it out alone. I was like a monomaniac—I never thought of giving up. I begged a little money from my brother and bought in all the stock of the 'Biddy Mining Company,' and went to work to solve the mystery of the amalgam. I was a good pupil in chemistry at college, and I put my whole life and brain into that mystery and I solved it. I found a way to treat it so all the gold was saved. That made me rich. I called the mine 'The Witch,' and it has made me what you see."
"It is like a fairy tale! What became of your faithful friends, Dan and Biddy?"
"I made Dan my foreman of the mine, and I built an eating-house and hotel for Biddy. They are with me yet. Eldred I bought out on the same terms as the rest."
He had a sudden sensation of heat in his face as he passed the chasm between the withdrawal of Dan and Biddy from the firm and his solution of the amalgam. He did not care to dwell upon that, because Eldred had sued him to recover his stock, claiming that it was bought in under false pretenses. Neither did he care to enter into the stormy time which followed the sudden leap of "The Witch" from a haunted hole in the ground to a cave of diamonds. He hurried on to the end while she listened in absorbed interest like a child to a wonder story.