"Either way would cost a good deal extra, Vane pointed out.
“That’s true,” Carroll agreed with an amused look, “You could charge it to the Company.”
Vane laughed. “You and I have a big stake in the concern, and I haven’t got used to spending money unnecessarily yet. I’ve been mighty glad to earn 2.50 by working from sun-up until dark, though I didn’t always get it afterwards. So have you.”
“How are you going to dispose of your dollars, then? You have a balance in cash, as well as the shares.”
“It has occurred to me that I might spend a few months in the Old Country. Have you ever been over?”
“I was across some time ago, but if you would sooner I went with you, I’ll come along. We could start as soon as we’ve arranged the few matters left open in Vancouver.”
Vane was glad to hear it. He knew little about Carroll’s antecedents, but the latter was obviously a man of education, and they had been comrades for the last three years. During that time they had learnt to trust each other, and to bear with each other’s idiosyncrasies. Filling his pipe again as he lay in the fading sunlight, Vane looked back on the nine years he had passed in Canada; and allowing for the periods of exposure to cold and wet, and the almost ceaseless toil, he admitted that he might have spent them more unpleasantly.
Having quarrelled with his relatives, he had come out with only a few pounds and had promptly set about earning a living with his hands. When he had been in the country several years, however, a friend of the family had sent him a small sum, and the young man had made a judicious use of the money. The lot he bought outside a wooden town doubled in value, and the share he took in a new orchard paid him well; but he had held aloof from the cities, and his only recklessness had been prospecting journeys into the wilderness. Prospecting for minerals is at once an art and a gamble, but even in this direction, in which he had had keen wits against him, Vane had held his own; but there was one side of life with which he was practically unacquainted.
There are no social amenities on the rangeside or in the bush, and women are scarce. Vane had lived in Spartan simplicity; his passions had remained unstirred, and now he was seven-and-twenty, sound and vigorous of body and, as a rule, level of head. At length, however, there was to be a change. He had earned an interlude of leisure, and he meant to enjoy it, without, as he prudently determined, making a fool of himself.
Presently Carroll took his pipe from his mouth.