“Consider me an employee from this moment, if you please. I’m good at earning things.”
“Have you earned the Ocoee property?” she asked, altogether, as it appeared, by way of making conversation.
“No; but my father did—very bitterly, as it turned out. May I ask what you know about the Ocoee?”
“Only what every one knows: that it brings sorrow and ruin to everybody who has anything to do with it.”
They had reached the rifle-stand, and Hartridge was reloading the target-gun for Miss Farron. There was still a little isolation for Tregarvon and his companion, and the young man made the most of it.
“Your words imply a lot more than they say,” he suggested. “I shall take an early opportunity to make my Highmount call, and when I do, perhaps you will tell me some of the things I need to know.”
“Professor Hartridge or President Caswell can tell you better than I can,” she demurred, as one dismissing an unpleasant subject. “I only know that the mine has always been a wretched failure; first a thing of broken promises, and afterward a cunningly devised pitfall for the unwary.”
If Tregarvon had for his major weakness the love of women, he was not lacking such other qualities as may go with broad shoulders, good gray eyes set wide apart, a clean-cut face, and a resolute jaw. The squareness of the jaw was emphasized when he said: “This is the time when the Ocoee quits being a failure, Miss Richardia. It is up to me to make it a success, and I mean to do it.”
It was at this conjuncture that Miss Farron, trying vainly to sight the rifle over the fallen-tree firing-stand, broke in upon the tête-à-tête.
“Dickie, dear, do come here and hold your hand over my left eye,” she called plaintively. “It just persists in coming open to see what the other one is trying to do.”