Brooke laughed, though his face was a trifle grim.
"The inference is tolerably plain," he said. "I really think I should have been more successful than I was at claim-jumping."
Barbara turned away from the piano, and Brooke, who laid down the violin, took the vacant place beside her.
"Still, I'm almost afraid it's out of the question now," he said, looking down at his scarred hands. "The kind of thing I have been doing the past few years spoils one's wrist. You no doubt noticed how slow I was in part of the shifting."
The girl noticed the leanness of his hands and the broken nails, and then glanced covertly at his face. It was gaunt and hollow, and she was sensible that there was a suggestion of weariness in his pose, which had, so far as she could remember, not been there before. Again a little thrill of compassion ran through her, and she felt, perhaps illogically, as she had done during the sonata, that no man could be wholly bad who played the violin as he did. Still, the last thing she intended doing was admitting it.
"Why did you stay at the Dayspring through the winter?" she asked, abruptly.
"Well," said Brooke, reflectively, "I really don't know. No doubt it was an unwarranted fancy, but I think I felt that after what I had purposed at the Canopus I was doing a little per contra, that is, something that might count in balancing the score against me, though, of course, I'm far from certain that it could be balanced at all. You see, it was a little lonely up there, especially after Allonby died, as well as a trifle cold."
Barbara would have smiled at any other time, for she knew what the ranges were in winter, but, as it was, her face was expressionless and her voice unusually even.
"I think I understand," she said. "It was probably the same idea that once led your knights and barons to set out on pilgrimages with peas in their shoes, though it is not recorded that they did the more sensible thing by restoring their plundered neighbors' possessions."
Brooke laughed. "Still, my stay at the Dayspring served a purpose, for, although somebody else would no doubt have done so eventually, I found the galena, and I didn't go quite so far as the gentlemen you mention after all. No doubt it is very reprehensible to steal a mine, or, in fact, anything, but I don't know that charitable people would consider that feeling tempted to do so was quite the same thing."