“I suppose you pledged yourself to that girl at Bonavista before you came away?” he said.
“I did,” Nasmyth admitted.
Gordon was silent for a moment or two. “Of course, I partly expected it,” he observed. “In fact, when I was talking to Miss Waynefleet about you, I ventured to predict something of the kind.”
The two men looked at each other for a moment, and then Nasmyth smiled.
“You haven’t anything else to say,” he suggested.
“No,” answered Gordon,––“at least, nothing that’s very material. Anyway, until we’re through with the business we have on hand, you’ll have to put that girl right out of your mind.”
They went on towards the little wooden hotel, and Nasmyth felt unusually thoughtful as he walked beside his jaded horse. He recognized that his comrade’s last observation was more or less warranted, and it was to some extent a relief to him when they reached the veranda stairway and Gordon led the horse away toward the stables.
It was rather more than an hour later when a specially invited company of men who had, as they said, a stake in the district assembled in the big general room of the hotel. There was about a dozen of them, men of different birth and upbringing, though all had the same quiet brown faces and steadiness of gaze. For the most part, they were dressed in duck, though Waynefleet and the hotel-keeper wore city clothes. The room was barely furnished, and panelled roughly with cedar-boards; but it had wide casements, from which those who sat in it could look out upon a strip of frothing river and the sombre forest that rolled up the rocky hills. The windows were wide open, and the smell of wood-smoke and the resinous odours of the firs flowed in. A look of expectancy crept into the men’s faces, and the murmur of their conversation suddenly fell away, when Nasmyth sat down at the head of the long table with Gordon at one side of him.
“Boys,” said Nasmyth, “one or two of you know why Gordon asked you here to meet me, but I had better roughly explain my project before I go any further. I’ll ask you to give me your close attention for the next three or four minutes.”