From the very beginning, there had been only trouble, only fighting, fighting, fighting against insurmountable odds, which seemed to throw him ever deeper into the mire of defeat, with every onslaught.

He had met a girl whom he had instinctively liked, only to find a mystery about her which could not be fathomed.

He had furthered his acquaintance with her, only to bring about a condition where now she passed him on the street without speaking and which, he felt, had instigated that tiny notice in the _Bugle_, telling of her probable marriage in the late autumn to a man he detested as a cad and as an enemy.

He had tried his best to follow the lure of silver; if silver existed in the Blue Poppy mine, he had labored against the powers of Nature, only to be the unwilling cause of a charge of murder against his father.

And more, it was clear, cruelly clear, that if it had not been for his own efforts and those of a man who had come to help him, the skeleton of Sissie Larsen never would have been discovered, and the name of Thornton Fairchild might have gone on in the peace which the white-haired, frightened man had sought.
But now there was no choosing.