It was already late in the afternoon, and Ned, hot and dusty, and as happy as a schoolboy, was helping the smith to shoe the last of the ponies, when Roberts, who had done his own work, walked into the forge.
For a minute or two Roberts stood unnoticed, observing his fellow-countryman with eyes full of a sort of hero-worship, commoner at a public school than in the world.
But Ned was one of those fellows who win men's hearts without trying to do so; a young fellow who said what he thought without waiting to pick his words, who did what he liked, and luckily liked what was good, and honest, and manly, and who withal looked the man he was, upstanding, frank, and absolutely fearless. Ned had been in the forge for perhaps half a day or more, and had already so won the heart of the smith that that good man with his eyes on the boy's great forearm had been hinting that there was "just as much money in a good smithy as there was in most of them up-country claims."
But Ned was bent on gold-mining and seeing life with the hard-fists, so though he loved to swing the great smith's hammer he was not to be tempted from his purpose, though he was quite ready to believe that a smith in New Westminster could earn more by his hands than many a professional man by his brains in Westminster on the Thames.
"Hullo, Rob! have you got through with your work?" cried Ned, catching sight of his friend at last.
"Yes. I've done all I've got to do; can I lend you a hand?"
"Why, no, thanks; my friend here is putting on the last shoe. But what is the matter? you look as if you had got 'turned round' in the bush, and were trying to think your way out;" and Ned laid his hand laughingly on his friend's shoulder.
Roberts laughed too, but led the younger man outside, and once there blurted out his trouble.
"Look here, Corbett, ever since that gambling row I've had my eye on Cruickshank, and I thought that I knew him for a rascal, but blow me if he hasn't got beyond me this time."
"How so, Rob?"