“You have seen Mr. Gordon?” she queried.
“I have,” answered Waynefleet with fine disdain. “You will understand that if he comes back here, he must be kept away from me. The man is utterly devoid of refinement or consideration.”
In the meanwhile Gordon was riding, circumspectly, down the rutted trail, and it was an hour later when he dismounted at the shanty of Nasmyth’s workmen, and shared a meal with the gang employed on the dam. After that he sat with Nasmyth, who still limped a little, in the hut, from which, as the door stood open, they could see the men stream up into the Bush and out along the 96 dam. The dam now stood high above the water-level, for the frost had bound fast the feeding snow upon the peaks above, though the stream roared and frothed through the two big sluice-gates. By-and-by, the ringing of axes and the clink of drills broke through the sound of the rushing waters. Gordon, who stretched himself out on a deer-hide lounge, smiled at Nasmyth as he lighted his pipe.
“I’ve been talking a little sense to Waynefleet this morning. I felt I had to, though I’m afraid it’s not going to be any use,” he announced.
“Whether you were warranted or not is, of course, another matter,” said Nasmyth. “Perhaps you were, if you did it on Miss Waynefleet’s account. Anyway, I don’t altogether understand why you should be sure it will have no effect.”
Gordon looked at him with a grin. “Well,” he remarked oracularly, “it’s easy to acquire an inflated notion of one’s own importance, though it’s quite often a little difficult to keep it. Something’s very apt to come along and prick you, and you collapse flat when it lets the inflation out. In some cases one never quite gets one’s self-sufficiency back. The scar the prick made is always there, but it’s different with Waynefleet. He is made of self-closing jelly, and when you take the knife out the gap shuts up again. It’s quite hard to fancy it was ever there.”
Nasmyth nodded gravely, for there was an elusive something in his comrade’s tone that roused his sympathy.
“Gordon,” he said, “is it quite impossible for you to go back East again?”
Gordon leaned back in his chair, and glanced out across the toiling men upon the dam, at the frothing river and rugged hillside, with a look of longing in his eyes.