“Oh, yes!” returned Acton, significantly. “Any way, I’ll go ashore with him, as soon as George has the gig ready.”
Acton and Nasmyth were rowed off together half an hour later, and they walked up through the hot main street of the little colliery town. It was not an attractive place, with rickety plank sidewalks raised several feet above the street, towering telegraph-poles, wooden stores, and square frame houses cracked by the weather, and mostly destitute of any adornment or paint. Blazing sunshine beat down upon the rutted street, and an unpleasant gritty dust blew along it.
There was evidently very little going on in the town that afternoon. Here and there a man leaned heavy-eyed, as if unaccustomed to the brightness, on the balustrade in front of a store, and raucous voices rose from one or two second-rate saloons, but there were few other signs of life, and Nasmyth was not sorry when they reached the wooden hotel. Acton stopped a moment in front of the building.
“Hutton’s an acquaintance of mine, and if you have to apply to men of his kind, he is, perhaps, as reliable as most,” he said. “Still, you want to remember that in this country it’s every man for himself, especially when you undertake a deal in land.” He smiled suggestively. “And now we’ll go in and see him.”
They came upon a man who appeared a little older than Nasmyth. He was sitting on the veranda, which was spacious, and had one or two wooden pillars with crude scroll-work attached to them in front. Acton nodded to the stranger.
“This is Mr. Nasmyth,” he said. “He came up with me. Doing much round here?”
The question was abrupt, but the man smiled.
“Oh,” he answered, “we endeavour to do a little everywhere.”
“Then I’ll leave you to it, and look round again by-and-by. I guess I may as well mention that Mr. Nasmyth is coming back with me.”