True, Fairchild was looking now at his idol through blue glasses, and they gave to her a dark, mysterious tone that he could not fathom.

There were too many things to explain; too many things which seemed to connect her directly with the Rodaines; too many things which appeared to show that her sympathies were there and that she might only be a trickster in their hands, a trickster to trap him! Even the episode of the lawyer could be turned to this account.

Had not another lawyer played the friendship racket, in an effort to buy the Blue Poppy mine?
And here Fairchild smiled grimly.

From the present prospects, it would seem that the gain would have been all on his side, for certainly there was little to show now toward a possibility of the Blue Poppy ever being worth anything near the figure which he had been offered for it.
And yet, if that offer had not been made as some sort of stiletto jest, why had it been made at all?
Was it because Rodaine knew that wealth did lie concealed there?
Was it because Squint Rodaine had better information even than the faithful, hard-working, unfortunate Harry?
Fairchild suddenly took hope.

He clenched his hands and he spoke, to himself, to the darkness and to the spirits of discouragement that were all about him: "If it's there, we 'll find it--if we have to work our fingers to the bone, if we have to starve and die there--we'll find it!" With that determination, he went to bed, to awake in the morning filled with a desire to reach the mine, to claw at its vitals with the sharp-edged drills, to swing the heavy sledge until his shoulders and back ached, to send the roaring charges of dynamite digging deeper and deeper into that thinning vein.