His voice in the gloom was charged with immeasurable feeling. She had never seen this side of him before. Here was primeval emotion, the desired for vengeance, filial obligation, hate that knew no mercy and could never be forgotten. She understood, now, the savage feuds that sometimes spring up among the mountain people, unable to forget a blow or an injury. She had the first inkling of how deeply his father's murder had influenced him.
But his face was calm when they emerged into the light. They walked over to the creek, and beneath its overhanging banks there were the snow had not swept, he found enough rocks for his monument. He gathered them, carried them in armfuls to a place fifty yards beyond the creek and down it, level with such a turn in the hillside above, beyond which the old creek bed obviously could not lie; then heaped them into a moment. Then he drew an old letter from his coat pocket, and searching farther, found a stub of a pencil. Virginia looked over his shoulders as he wrote.
One hundred yards up the stream Harold watched them, dumbfounded as to what they were doing. He saw Bill finish the writing, then place the larger on the monument, fastening it down with a large stone. Then he came mushing toward them.
So intent were they upon their work that they didn't notice him until he was almost up to them. But both of them would have paused in wonder if they had observed the curious mixture of emotions upon his lips. His lips hung loose, his eyes protruded, and something that might have been greed, or might have been jealousy or some other unguessed emotion drew and harshened his features.
"You've found a mine?" he asked.
Virginia looked up, joyful at Bill's good fortune. "We've found his father's mine—the old shaft where the bear was been sleeping. But there's a dreadful side of it too."
"Show me where it is. I want to see it. Take me into it, Virginia—right away——"
Bill had a distinct sensation of revulsion at the thought of this man going into his father's sepulcher, and he didn't know why. It was an instinct too deeply buried for him to trace. But he tried to force it down. There was no reason why Virginia's fiance shouldn't view his mine. Already, Virginia was pointing out the way.
"You can claim half to it," he was whispering into her ear. "You were the one with him when he found it."
"I can—but I won't," she replied coldly. "He asked me to go with him. The thought's unworthy of you, Harold."