"It is an old trick," he commented, rather sorrowfully, I fancied. "In all the older locations there have been bits of ground missed in the criss-crossing of the claims. Some one of you three has been sharp enough to find one of those bits just here."
"Well; supposing we have—what then?" I asked.
He was silent for a half-minute or so. Barrett had led Mary Everton to the shoulder of the spur where the view of the distant town was unobstructed, and Gifford was still in the shaft.
"I don't know you, Mr. Bertrand," my seatmate began slowly, "and I shouldn't venture to set up any standard of right and wrong in your behalf. But that young man out yonder with my daughter: I've known him a long time, and I knew his people. It is a thousand pities to drag him into your undertaking."
"There has been no especial 'dragging' that I am aware of; and I don't know why you should be sorry for Barrett," I returned rather tartly.
"I am sorry because Robert Barrett has hitherto lived an upright and honest life. He had excellent prospects in the bank, and it seems a great pity that he has seen fit to throw them away."
By this time I was entirely at sea. "You will have to make it plainer—much plainer," I told him.
"I have been hoping you wouldn't force me to call it by its ugly name," was the sober rejoinder. "It is blackmail, Mr. Bertrand; criminal blackmail, as I think you must know."
"That is a pretty serious charge for you to make, isn't it?"
"Not more serious than the occasion warrants. You three have discovered this little scrap of unclaimed ground in the middle of the Lawrenceburg property. You are digging; and presently, when you are down far enough so that your operations cannot be observed from the shaft mouth, you will announce that you have struck the Lawrenceburg ore body. In that event, as you have doubtless foreseen, our company will have no recourse but to buy you off at your own figure."