A Damaged Reputation

Brooke fancied he knew, and, groping round the room, found and lighted a lantern. Its radiance showed that his face was grim again.

"If you can manage to drag yourself as far as the mine, I think it would be advisable," he said. "It seems to me significant that the stove is quite cold. One would fancy there had been no fire in it for several hours now."

The doctor went with him, and somehow contrived to descend the shaft. Brooke leaned out from the ladder, swinging his lantern when they neared the bottom, and his shout rang hollowly among the rocks. There was no answer, and even the doctor, who had never seen Allonby, felt the silence that followed it.

"If the man was as ill as you fancied how could he have got down?" he said.

"I don't know," said Brooke. "Still, I think we shall come upon him not very far away."

They went down a little further into the darkness, and then the prediction was warranted, for Brooke swung off his hat, and the doctor dropped on one knee when Allonby's white face appeared in the moving light. He lay very still, with one arm under him, and, when a few seconds had slipped by, the doctor looked up and, meeting Brooke's eyes, nodded.

"Yes," he said. "It must have happened at least twelve hours ago. How, I can't tell exactly. Cardiac affection, I fancy. Anyway, not a fall. There is something in his hand, and a bundle of papers beside him."

Brooke glanced away from the dead man, and noticed the stain of giant powder on the rock, and shattered fragments that had not been where they lay when he had last descended. Then he turned again, and took the piece of stone the doctor had, with some difficulty, dislodged from the cold fingers.

"It's heavy," said the latter.

"Yes," said Brooke, quietly. "A considerable percentage of it is either lead or silver. You are no doubt right in your diagnosis; so far as it goes, I'm inclined to fancy I know what brought on the cardiac affection."

The doctor, who said nothing, handed him the papers, and Brooke, who opened them vacantly, started a little when he saw the jagged line, which, in drawings of the kind, usually indicates a break, was now traced across the ore vein in the plan. There was also a scrap of paper, with his name scrawled across it, and he read, "When you have got your dollars back four or five times over, sell out your stock."

He scarcely realized its significance just then, and, moving the lantern a little, looked down on Allonby's face again. It was very white and quiet, and the signs of indulgence had faded from it, while Brooke was sensible of a curious thrill of compassion.

"I wonder if the thing we long for most invariably comes when it is no use to us?" he said. "Well, we will go back to the shanty."

There was nothing more that any man could do for Allonby until the morrow, and the darkness once more closed in on him, while the flickering light grew fainter up the shaft.

XXV.

BARBARA IS MERCILESS

It was about eight o'clock in the evening when Brooke stopped a moment as he entered the verandah of Devine's house, which stood girt about by sombre pines on a low rise divided by a waste of blackened stumps and branches from the outskirts of Vancouver city. Beneath him rose the clustering roofs and big electric lights, and a little lower still a broad track of silver radiance, athwart which a great ship rode with every spar silhouetted black as ebony, streaked the inlet. Though the frost was arctic in the ranges he had left a few days ago, it was almost warm down there, and he felt that he would have preferred to linger on the verandah, or even go back to his hotel, for the front of the wooden house was brilliantly lighted, and he could hear the chords of a piano.

It was evident that Mrs. Devine was entertaining, and standing there, draped from neck to ankles in an old fur coat, he felt that he with his frost-nipped face and hard, scarred hands would be distinctly out of place amidst an assembly of prosperous citizens, while he was by no means certain how Mrs. Devine or Barbara would receive him. Often as he had thought of the latter, since he made his confession, he felt scarcely equal to meeting her just then. Still, it was necessary that he should see Devine, who was away at the neighboring city of New Westminster, when Brooke called at his office soon after the Pacific express arrived that afternoon, but had left word that he would be at home in the evening and would expect him; and flinging his cigar away he moved towards the door.

A Chinese house boy took his coat from him in the hall, and as he stood under the big lamp it happened that Barbara came out of an adjacent door with two companions. Brooke felt his heart throb, though he did not move, and the girl, who turned her head a moment in his direction, crossed the hall, and vanished through another door. Then he smiled very grimly, for, though she made no sign of being aware of his presence, he felt that she had seen him. This was no more than he had expected, but it hurt nevertheless. In the meanwhile the house boy had also vanished, and it was a minute or two later when Mrs. Devine appeared, but Brooke could not then or afterwards decide whether she had heard the truth concerning him, for, though this seemed very probable, he knew that Barbara could be reticent, and surmised that Devine did not tell his wife everything. In any case, she did not shake hands with him.

"My husband, who has just come home, is waiting for you in his smoking-room," she said. "It is the second door down the corridor."

Brooke fancied that she could have been a trifle more cordial, but the fact that she sent nobody to show him the way, at least, was readily accounted for in a country where servants of any kind are remarkably scarce. It also happened that while he proceeded along the corridor one of Barbara's companions turned to her.

"Did you see the man in the hall as we passed through?" she said. "I didn't seem to recognize him."

Barbara was not aware that her face hardened a trifle, but her companion noticed that it did. She had certainly seen the man, and had felt his eyes upon her, while it also occurred to her that he looked worn and haggard, and she had almost been stirred to compassion. He had made no claim to recognition, but his face had not been quite expressionless, and she had seen the wistfulness in it. There was, in fact, a certain forlornness about his attitude which had its effect on her, and it was, perhaps, because of this she had suddenly hardened herself against him.

"He is a Mr. Brooke – from the mine," she said.

"Brooke!" said her companion. "The man from the Dayspring? I should like to talk to him."

Barbara made a little gesture, the meaning of which was not especially plain. She had read the sensational account of the journey Brooke and the doctor had made through the ranges, which had by some means been supplied the press. It made it plain to her that the man was doing and enduring a good deal, and she was not disposed to be unduly severe upon a repentant offender, even though she fancied that nothing he could do would ever reinstate him in the place he once held in her estimation. The difficulty, however, was that she could not be sure he was contrite at all, or had not sent that story to the press himself with a purpose, though she realized that the last course was a trifle unlikely in his case.

"Since Grant Devine will probably bring him in you may get your wish," she said, indifferently.

Devine in the meanwhile was gravely turning over several pieces of broken rock which Brooke had handed him.

"Yes," he said, "that's most certainly galena, and carrying good metal by the weight of it. How much of it's lead and how much silver I naturally don't know yet, but, anyway, it ought to leave a good margin on the smelting. You haven't proved the vein?"

"No," said Brooke, "I fancy we are only on the edge of it, but it would have cost me two or three weeks' work to break out enough of rock to form any very clear opinion alone, and I was scarcely up to it. It occurred to me that I had better come down and get the necessary men, though I'm not sure we can contrive to feed them or induce them to come."

Devine nodded. "You must have had the toughest kind of time!" he said. "Well, we'll bid double wages, and you can offer that freight contractor his own figure to bring provisions in."

He stopped abruptly with a glance at Brooke's haggard face. "I guess you can hold out another month or two."

"Of course," said Brooke, quietly.

"It's worth while. Allonby was quite dead when you got back to him?"

"Yes, I and the doctor buried him. We used giant powder."

Devine laid down his cigar. "It was a little rough on Allonby, for it was his notion that the ore was there, and now, when it seems we've struck it, it's not going to be any use to him. I guess that man put a good deal more than dollars into the mine."

Brooke, who had lived with Allonby, knew that this was true, but Devine made a little abrupt gesture which seemed to imply that after all that aspect of the question did not greatly concern them.

"I'll send you every man we can raise," he said. "I've got quite a big credit through from London, and we can cut expenses by letting up a little on the Canopus."

"But you expected a good deal from that mine."

"No," said Devine, drily, "I can't say I did. It's quite a while since we got a good clean up out of it."

Brooke sat silent, apparently regarding his cigar, for a moment or two. "Are you sure it's wise to tell me so much?" he said. "There are men in this city who would make good use of any information I might furnish them with."

Devine smiled in a curious fashion. "Well," he said, reflectively, "I guess it is. You've had about enough of playing Saxton's game, and, though I don't know that everybody would do it, I'm going to trust you."

"Thank you," said Brooke, quietly.

Devine, who took up his cigar again, made a little movement with his hand. "We'll let that slide. Now when I got the specimen and your note which the doctor sent on I figured I'd increase my holding, and cabled a buying order to London, but I had to pay more for the stock than I expected. It appears that a man, called Cruttenden, had been quietly taking any that was put on the market up."

Brooke knew that his trustee had, as directed, been buying the Dayspring shares, but he desired to ascertain how far Devine's confidence in him went.

"That didn't suggest anything to you?" he said.

"No," said Devine, drily, "it didn't – and I've answered your question once. Besides, the man who snapped up every thing that was offered hadn't waited until you struck the ore. Still, I'd very much like to know what he was buying that stock for."

Brooke did not tell him. Indeed, he was not exactly sure what had induced him to cable Cruttenden to buy. He had acted on impulse with Barbara's scornful words ringing in his ears, and a vague feeling that to share the risks of the man he had plotted against would be some small solace to him, for he had not at the time the slightest notion that the hasty act of self-imposed penance was to prove remarkably profitable.

"I scarcely think it is worth while worrying over that point," he said. "There are folks in our country with more money than sense, or a good many foreign mines would never be floated, and it is just as likely that the man did not exactly know why he was doing it himself."

Devine laughed. "Well," he said, "we'll go along now and see what the rest are doing."