True, she had talked of others who might have hopes in regard to Anita Richmond; in fact, Fairchild had met one of those persons in the lawyer, Randolph Farrell.

But just the same it all was cheering.

It is man's supreme privilege to hope.
And so Fairchild was happy and somewhat at ease for the first time in weeks.

Out at the edge of the mine, as he made his trips, he stopped now and then to look at something he had disregarded previously,--the valley stretching out beneath him, the three hummocks of the far-away range, named Father, Mother and Child by some romantic mountaineer; the blue-gray of the hills as they stretched on, farther and farther into the distance, gradually whitening until they resolved themselves into the snowy range, with the gaunt, high-peaked summit of Mount Evans scratching the sky in the distance.
There was a shimmer in the air, through which the trees were turned into a bluer green, and the crags of the mountains made softer, the gaping scars of prospect holes less lonely and less mournful with their ever-present story of lost hopes.

On a great boulder far at one side a chipmunk chattered.