His infatuation for Louise was of an ennobling character. He was a fatalist in this: that he believed when the time came for him to speak his heart to her he would have courage to do so, and contented himself in loving blindly on.
When he awoke next morning he found a heavy snow had fallen. Nothing like it had happened in Gold Bluff before in many years. A great many of the mines were necessarily shut down on account of the scarcity of fuel to operate the engines. During the next four weeks snows kept falling heavier and heavier, and in a measure cut off communication with the outer world.
Vance applied himself industriously to his paper, widening his acquaintanceship among the people of Gold Bluff, solicited advertisements, and succeeded far beyond his expectations.
His friends complimented him on the neat appearance of the Prospector. It was filled with excellent reading matter, and its circulation was constantly increasing.
Another heavy snow storm during the holidays rendered the roads quite impassable and finally work on Gray Rocks was necessarily suspended, nor was it resumed until late the following spring. In the meantime matters were progressing slowly in the great Thief River Valley. There had been no meeting of the Waterville Town Company. Homer Winthrop and Marcus Donald regularly opened up the Town Company’s office every morning and closed it every evening. Time hung heavy on their hands. Thus passed the winter months away in weary waiting for a boom in real estate that seemed stubborn and would not come.
Dick Ballard called one afternoon in early April, and suggested that his finances were running rather low, and if it would be convenient he would like a check for Homer Winthrop’s board.
Winthrop was a proud fellow and disliked to admit that he was, in the ordinary parlance, “broke.”