"I do. Will it be an hour or more before you make it clear how that concerns anybody?"
"No, sir. I'm getting right there. The snow's melting tolerably fast, and the drainage from the big peak isn't going the way it used to now. The foot of the valley's quite a nice-sized lake, and the stream has washed most of the broke-up pines the snow brought down into the outlet gully. I guess you have seen a bad lumber jam?"
Brooke had, and he started as he recognized the significance of what was happening, for once a drifting log strikes fast in a narrow passage the stream is very apt to pile up and wedge fast those that come behind into a tolerably efficient substitute for a dam, while when log still follows log the result is usually an inextricable confusion of interlocked timber.
"When the jam up broke we'd have the water and the wreckage down on the mine," he said.
"All there is of it," said Jimmy. "It would cost quite a pile of dollars to dry the workings out."
Brooke strode to the door and flung it open, but there was black darkness outside and a persistent patter of thick warm rain. Then he swung round with an objurgation and Jimmy grinned.
"I guess it's no use. You couldn't see a pine ten foot off, and there isn't a man in the country who would go down that gully with a lantern in his hand," he said. "Go off to sleep. You'll see quite as much as you want to, anyway, to-morrow."
Brooke stood still and listened a moment or two while the hoarse roar of a river which he knew was swirling in fierce flood among the boulders far down in the hollow came up in deep reverberations across the pines. It was a significant hint of what was likely to happen when the pent-up water poured down upon the mine. Still, there was nothing he could do in that thick darkness.
"Sleep!" he said. "When almost every dollar I have—and a good deal more than that—is sunk in the mine."
"Well," said Jimmy, reflectively, "in your place, if I could make sure of the dollars, I'd take my chances on the rest. Now and then I'm quite thankful I haven't any. It saves a mighty lot of worry."