“Oh,” she said hastily, “I’m very glad. You found the mine?”
“No,” replied Weston, gravely, “Grenfell found it.”
“Where is he? Have you brought him with you?”
“I haven’t,” said Weston, and she noticed the sudden dropping of his voice, “Grenfell’s dead. He—went on—the night before we struck the lode up there in the bush.”
“Before you struck the lode? But you said he found it.”
“Yes,” admitted Weston, quietly, “I think he did.”
He told her the story in a few forceful words, and when he had finished, her eyes grew a trifle hazy. She had sympathy and intuition, and the thought of the worn-out man lying still forever beside the gold he so long had sought affected her curiously. Weston, who felt his heart throb painfully fast as he watched her, nodded.
“Yes,” he said, “it was rather pitiful, and there was a certain ghastly irony in the situation; but, after all, as he once admitted, there was very little that gold could have given him.”
Ida sat silent a moment or two. She was sorry for Grenfell, but he had, as his comrade said, gone on, and she was more concerned about the results of his discovery to those who were left behind.
“The lode,” Weston added, “is all that he described it.”