“Well,” he said, “they’d have to serve it, and while their man was trying to get down the gully I’d rip most of the bottom out of this strip of cañon. I’m not sure we haven’t gone far enough already to split up the whole ridge that’s holding back the river. Still, I’m going on a little. I mean to make sure.” He bent over the machine. “You have brought up some letters? The man has, perhaps, been trying to worry me again.”
“Two or three,” replied Wheeler. “I called at the settlement for them. One is evidently from a lady.”
Nasmyth swung round again and took the little dainty envelope from him. He smeared it with his wet hands as he opened it, and then his voice broke sharply through the thud of the hammers.
“Can’t you move? I’m too far from that lamp,” he said.
He scrambled by Wheeler and crouched close beneath the smoky, flickering flame, dripping, spattered with mire, and very grim in face. The note was from Violet Hamilton, and it was brief.
“I should like to see you as soon as you can get away,” it read. “There is something I must say, and since it might spare both of us pain, I feel almost tempted to try to explain it now. That, however, would perhaps be weak of me, and I think you will, after all, not blame me very greatly.”
He flung the note down in the water, and straightened himself wearily.
“I am invited to go down to Bonavista, and it’s 314 tolerably clear that I have another trouble to face,” he announced in a dull tone. “In the meanwhile there’s this heading to be pushed on, and it seems to me that the thing that counts most is what I owe the boys.”
Wheeler, who had heard something from Gordon, looked at him with grave sympathy, but Nasmyth made an expressive gesture as he glanced down at his attire.
“Well,” he remarked, “I probably look very much what I am––a played-out borer of headings and builder of dams, who has just now everything against him. Still, I was fool enough to indulge in some very alluring fancies a little while ago.” He turned to Wheeler with a sudden flash in his eyes. “You can take those letters to Gordon and tell him to open them. I’ve a little trouble to grapple with, and I don’t feel inclined for conversation.”