“Yes,” I continued, “I was coming to it. It is this: while I live I will never abandon the hope of winning you; and, with such a hope, whatever difficulty must be grappled with first, I know that some day I shall do it.”
“And,” said Grace, with a heightened color, and her liquid eyes shining, “is there still nothing else?” And while I glanced at her in a bewildered fashion she continued, “Do you, like my father, take my consent for granted? Well, I will give it to you. Ralph, while you are living, and after, if you must go a little before I do, I will never look with favor upon any man. Meantime, sweetheart—for, as he said, I will not resist my father’s will, save only in one matter—you must work and I must wait, trusting in what 194 the future may bring. And so—you must leave me now; and it may be long before I see you. Go, and God bless you, taking my promise with you.”
She laid her little hand in mine, and I bent down until the flushed face was level with my own. When I found myself in the open air again, I strode through the scented shadows triumphantly. The Colonel’s opposition counted as nothing then. I was sanguine and young, and I knew, because she had said it, that until I had worsted fortune Grace Carrington would wait for me.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE OPENING OF THE LINE
During the weeks that followed I saw neither Grace nor Colonel Carrington—though the latter fact did not cause me unnecessary grief, and we heard much about his doings. From what the independent miners who strolled into our camp at intervals told us, the Day Spring shaft had proved a costly venture, and had so far failed to lay bare any traces of payable milling ore. Still, the redoubtable Colonel continued with his usual tenacity, and was now driving an adit into the range side to strike the quartz reef at another level.
“There’s a blamed sight more gold going into them diggings than they’ll ever get out, and the man who is running them will make a big hole in somebody’s bank account,” said one informant meditatively. “However, there’s no use wasting time trying to give him advice. I strolled round one morning promiscuous, and sat down in his office. ‘See here, Colonel, you’re ploughing a bad patch,’ I says, ‘and having a knowledge of good ones I might tell you something if I prowled through your workings.’”
“What did he say?” asked Harry, smiling at me. And the narrator expectorated disgustedly as he answered: