“I believed,” Farley retorted quietly, “that there was gold in these mountains. Since my fall I have not had a chance to get about. So I haven’t learned yet that there isn’t.”
Virginia Dalton had stepped a little from her father’s side, and now stood with troubled face looking from one man to the other. There was an atmosphere of distrust, almost of open hostility, and she could not understand.
Dalton turned slowly from Farley to the girl. As he moved the iron rigidity left his face, the cold glint passed from his eyes. It was wonderful how the man’s whole expression softened.
“Come here, Virginia,” he said gently. “I want to talk with you a little. Mr. Farley,” with grave courtesy, “will pardon us?”
Farley bowed. Dalton, with his arm about his daughter, entered the cabin, closing the door behind them, leaving the younger man alone with his doubts, his suspicions, his fears. Their voices came to him, confused, indistinct. He supposed that the father was asking all about this intruder in their quiet Eden; whence he had come, what she knew of him and his purposes.
Finally the door opened and Dalton stood on the threshold looking steadily out at Farley.
“I trust that you will overlook my rather scant courtesy in greeting a guest, Mr. Farley.” The tone was open, frank, pleasant. “I am afraid that living a sort of exile in the wilderness so many years has made me forget the social usages. Will you come in for a pipe? We can talk things over.”
“I think,” Farley replied, his eyes running past the broad form so nearly filling the doorway to the form of the slender girl standing within the room, “that I have already allowed myself to become a nuisance.
“Miss Dalton has been very kind to me. But for her, I imagine, I should never have come so easily out of my accident. Now I am able to be about again, and I think that I’ll take up the thing which brought me here. I have some work to do. But—” the two men’s eyes meeting again, each studying the other—“I shall see you again before I leave the valley for good. And”—with slow significance—“I shall tell you all about what brought me here before I go next time.”
He lifted his hat to the girl, said a brief word of thanks and of good-by, and limped away toward the lake. And his heart was very bitter as he went, and there was little hope in him.