Steve was always seeking for information, and what he was learning in these early days was to serve him well in the future.
For the rest of the week he worked diligently, increasing his daily output by at least a ton. One day he fell considerably below this, as the ore came out hard and was not delivered to the car men as fast as they could handle it. That was a day that Spooner was at his worst.
Saturday came, the day that the young miner was to receive his first pay envelope. He had made it a practice to carry his lunch below and eat it there. This saved him considerable effort, and gave him an opportunity to rest before the whistles blew to resume work. Steve usually chose some quiet spot in an unused drift, where, seating himself by the side of a little stream of water trickling from the rocks, he would stick his candle-holder in a crevice and tuck the cover of his dinner pail under the trickling stream to catch water to drink with his meal.
He had just settled himself down for his noon-day meal, on this Saturday afternoon, when he was attracted by a bobbing candle on a miner's cap approaching him from down the drift just off the main level.
"Now, I wonder what he wants?" mused Rush, peering out curiously. "I believe that's Bob Jarvis. He is probably coming in here to eat his dinner. He'll be surprised to find me here. Hello, Bob."
"Hello yourself."
"I just did. Sit down and have lunch with me."
"I ain't lunching to-day. I——"
"Eat some of mine if you haven't yours with you. There is enough for both of us in my pail, and here is some of the finest water you ever drank. It's colder than any ice water I ever tasted."