Brooke laughed hoarsely. "I believe I must have left it at the ranch. Still, that's not so very astonishing, because, even if I didn't do it altogether, I came very near losing my head."
Jimmy again surveyed him, with a grin. "Devine," he said, suggestively, "has been giving you whisky, and it mixed you up a little? That's what comes of drinking tea."
Brooke made no answer, though a swift flush rose to his face, as he remembered his half-coherent speeches at the ranch, and the astonishment in the girl's eyes, for it seemed probable that the explanation that had occurred to Jimmy had also suggested itself to her. Then he smiled grimly, as he decided that it did not greatly matter, after all, since she could not think more hardly of him than she would do when the truth came out presently.
XXII.
THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS.
It was already late at night, but the mounted mail carrier had not reached the Dayspring mine, and Allonby, who was impatiently waiting news of certain supplies and plant, had insisted on Brooke sitting up with him. It was also raining hard, and, in spite of the glowing stove, the shanty reeked with damp, while there was a steady splashing upon the iron roof above. Now and then a trickle descended from a defective joint in it, and formed a rivulet upon the earthen floor, or fizzled into a puff of steam upon the corroded iron pipe which stretched across the room. The latter was strewn with soil-stained clothing, and wet knee-boots with the red mire of the mine still clinging about them.
Brooke lay drowsily in a canvas chair, while Allonby sat at the uncleanly table, with a litter of burnt matches and tobacco ash as well as a steaming glass in front of him. His eyes were bleared and watery, and there were curious little patches of color in his haggard face, while the gorged, blue veins showed upon his forehead. He had been discoursing in a maudlin fashion which Brooke, who had endeavored to make the best of his company during the last three months, found singularly exasperating, but he moved abruptly when a stream from the roof suddenly descended upon his grizzled head.
"That," he said, "is one of the trifles a man with a sense of proportion and a contemplative temperament makes light of. The curse of this effete age is its ceaseless striving after luxury."
Brooke laughed softly, as he watched the water run down the moralizer's nose. "It is," he said, "at least, not often attainable in this country."
"Which is precisely why men grow rich in the Colonies. Now, here are you and I, who at one time in our lives required four or five courses for dinner, not only subsisting, but thriving upon grindstone bread, flapjacks, molasses, and the contents of certain cans from Chicago, which one cannot even be certain are what they are averred to be, though the Colonist consumes them with the faith that asks no questions."