The soft laugh of Joyce saved for the moment the situation. "Dear me, aren't we getting a little excited? Mr. Bleyer, tell me more. How does a—a highgrader, didn't you call him?—how does he get a chance to steal the ore?"
"He picks out the best pieces while he is working—the nuggets that are going to run a high per cent. of gold—and pockets them. At night he carries them away."
"But—haven't you any policemen here? Why don't you stop them and search them?"
"The miners' union is too strong. There would be a strike if we tried it. But it has got to come to that soon. The companies will have to join hands for a finish fight. They can't have men hoisted up from their work with a hundred dollars' worth of ore stowed away on them."
"Is it as bad as that, Mr. Bleyer?" asked Lady Farquhar in surprise.
"Sometimes they take two or three hundred dollars' worth at once."
"They don't all steal, do they?" demanded Moya with an edge of sarcasm in her clear voice.
Bleyer laughed grimly. "I'd like to know the names of even a few that don't. I haven't been introduced to them."
"One hundred per cent. dishonest," murmured Moya without conviction.
"I don't guarantee the figures, Miss Dwight." The superintendent added grudgingly: "They don't look at it that way. Bits of highgrade ore are their perquisite, they pretend to think."