"Is that what it means to the highgraders too?" Joyce let her smiling eyes rest with innocent impudence in those of the miner.
Kilmeny showed no sign of discomfiture. His gaze met hers fully and steadily. "Something of that sort, I suppose."
"Just what is a highgrader?"
Moya held her breath. The debonair lightness of the question could not rob it of its significance. Nobody but Joyce would have dared such a home thrust.
Jack laughed dryly. "A highgrader is a miner who saves the company for which he works the trouble of having valuable ore smelted."
"But doesn't the ore belong to the company?"
"There's a difference of opinion about that. Legally it does, morally it doesn't--not all of it. The man who risks his life and the support of his family by working underground is entitled to a share of the profit, isn't he?"
"He gets his wages, doesn't he?"
"Enough to live on--if he doesn't want to live too high. But is that all he is entitled to? Your friend"--he waved a hand toward Verinder, puffing up the trail a hundred yards below--"draws millions of dollars in dividends from the work of these men. What does he do to earn it?"
"You're a socialist," charged Joyce gayly. "Or is it an anarchist that believes such dreadful things?"
"Mr. Kilmeny doesn't quite believe all he says," suggested Moya quietly.
"Don't I?" Behind Jack's quizzical smile there was a hint of earnestness. "I believe that Dobyans Verinder is a parasite in Goldbanks. He gobbles up the product of others' toil."
Joyce flashed at him a swift retort. "Then if you believe that, you ought to be a highgrader yourself."
"Joyce," reproved Moya, aghast.
"I mean, of course, in principle," her friend amended, blushing slightly at her own audacity.
Her impudence amused the miner. "Perhaps I am--in principle."
"But only in principle," she murmured, tilting a radiant challenge at him.
"Exactly--in principle," he agreed. There was humor in his saturnine face.
Joyce ventured one daring step further. "But of course in practice----"
"You should have been a lawyer, Miss Seldon," he countered. "If you were, my reply would be that by advice of counsel I must decline to answer."
"Oh, by advice of counsel! Dear me, that sounds dreadfully legal, doesn't it, Moya? Isn't that what criminals say when----?"
"----When they don't want to give themselves away. I believe it is," he tossed back with the same lightness. "Before I make confession I shall want to know whether you are on my side--or Verinder's."
Under the steady look of his bold, possessive eyes the long silken lashes fell to the soft cheeks. Joyce understood the unvoiced demand that lay behind the obvious one. He had thrown down the gage of battle. Was she for Verinder or for him? If he could have offered her one-half the advantages of his rival, her answer would not have been in doubt. But she knew she dared not marry a poor man, no matter how wildly his presence could set her pulses flying or how great her longing for him. Not the least intention of any romantic absurdity was in her mind. When the time came for choice she would go to Verinder and his millions. But she did not intend to let Jack Kilmeny go yet.