“And I,” said Webster, looking at his travel-stained clothes, “feel that I am turning into a second Rip Van Winkle.”
“We are like a party of disreputable gipsies,” said Miss Anstrade, with a look at Hume, whose boots were torn, and whose outward appearance was scarcely an improvement on the many-patched garments of Klaas. “Let us get into a new outfit, and do you men act the barber to each other.”
“Before recovering our respectability,” said Hume, “we must overhaul the waggon, grease the axles, repack, mend, and patch up.”
They made a stay there, and the next evening, after several hours of hard work, the camp presented a trim appearance, and the three sat down, quite smartened up, and in good spirits once again, to dine off wild ducks and sand grouse. The map of Old Hume the Hunter was brought out and studied now on the very ground over which he had passed on his adventurous journey, and they found themselves, in their growing excitement, looking away to the south-east, to where the shadowy outlines of lofty mountains showed dark against the sky. Somewhere within that rugged casket lay the treasure that throughout the centuries had remained for them alone, and the flickering light shining upon their faces showed the flush in their cheeks as the thoughts of what its possession would mean flamed in their brains; revealed also the stern look shot from one man at the other, at the second thought that, bound up with that treasure of gold, was that other treasure of a beautiful woman.
“Beyond that mountain,” she said dreamily, in her rich voice, “lies Europe, ambition, power, pleasure, love. I wonder which of these you will follow when the mountains have given up their secret.”
“Give me a house by the sea,” said Webster, “and a wife I love, and who loves me.”
“And the sound of the sea would stir the sailor in you, and one day your wife would be looking at a white speck in the horizon, and you would be walking the bridge again.”
“And she would not grudge me that if she loved me,” he said quietly.
Hume cast a swift look at Webster, whose face had turned white, and he had reached out his hand, for to both of them there came, at that moment, the thought of Captain Pardoe and his betrothed.
“What is it?” she asked, noting the action.