"Not going yet, Oswald? What a one you are!--Afraid of being in the streets late, it's my belief. I say! when am I to have the thousand pounds?"
"My mind is not quite made up yet," was the answer, a rather unexpected one to Mark's ears. "Mark, did Barker get any bad news tonight?"
"Bad news!" repeated Mark, as if quite at a loss to know what could be meant.
"By that dispatch from Wales?"
"Not at all," returned Mr. Mark, volubly. "He had forgotten to leave some instructions behind him, so they telegraphed. What put your head upon bad news?"
"Barker's countenance as he read the dispatch; and yours also when you joined him. You both looked as though some great calamity had occurred."
Mark laughed blithely. "Oswald, old fellow, you were always inclined to be fanciful. The mine is a glorious mine, and you'll be a blind booby if you don't secure some benefit in it. I'll answer for the safety of the investment with--with--my life," concluded Mark, speaking rather strongly in his loss for a simile. "Can't you rely upon me?"
O Mark Cray! His protestations of the "safety" were excusable before, when he believed what he said: but they were not now. Since that ominous message arrived his very heart had been quaking within him. In the few confidential words he had just exchanged with Barker on going out the latter had said: "We must get all the money we can, for we shall want it. Water, no matter how slight the irruption, plays the very deuce with the costs of a mine." And Mark Cray, to avert, or help to avert, or to conceal the calamity, was quite ready to sacrifice his own good faith and the money of his brother.