“I traced it up from the little stream that runs away from it. I found it in March, one day when I was prowling.”
“Prowling! What’s prowling?”
“Prowling?” she smiled, but pensively, her eyes on the water. “It’s just wandering about, generally alone, and not going to any particular place. I’ve prowled all over here. I can lead you straight to the two old shafts and show you the dumps and the remains of the old windlass. They’re almost entirely hidden by wild grapes and things. People who don’t know could easily fall in the shafts; one of them’s quite deep.”
It was now her companion’s turn to look pensive. He had sunk the two shafts, and in them, as in the property, how many thousands of dollars he did not like to think.
“Those shafts were made,” he said, “fifteen years ago when we all thought you had only to turn over a few shovelfuls of earth and find your fortune.” He struck the rock with his hand and said laughingly: “What an old fraud you’ve been!”
She looked at him without returning his smile.
“Colonel Parrish,” she said anxiously, “did you sink those two shafts?”
He nodded, once more surprised at her indirect reference to his ownership of the land. She made no reply, but, plucking a fern growing out of the earth near her, began slowly to shred its leaves from its stalk and sprinkle them on the surface of the water.
“And,” she said suddenly, “you intend now, quite soon, to build a hotel back here, under the pines, at the top of the hill, don’t you?”
That she should disappoint him with these persistent and almost indecent inquiries, considering the situation, hurt and irritated him. It was so out of keeping with her general suggestion of something sensitive and girlishly naïve.