“Why ‘Haunted Hill’?” he asked curiously.
Iredale shrugged.
“By reason of a little graveyard on the side of it. Evidently where the early settlers buried their dead. It is a local name given, I suppose, by the prairie folk of your neighbourhood. Come on.”
The two men set out. Nor did they return until six o’clock. Their shoot was productive of a splendid bag––prairie chicken and geese. Both men were excellent shots. Iredale was perhaps the better of the two, at least his bag numbered two brace more than that of his companion; but then, as Hervey told himself, he was using a strange gun, whilst Iredale was using the weapon he most favoured. Supper was prepared by the time they returned to the house. Iredale, healthily hungry and calmly contented, sat down to the meal; Hervey, famished by his unusual exercise, joined him in the loudest of good spirits.
Towards the close of the meal, when the whisky-and-water Hervey had liberally primed himself with had had due effect, he broached the subject that was ever uppermost in his thoughts. He began expansively––
“You know, George,”––he had already adopted the familiarity, and Iredale had not troubled to show disapproval, probably he remembered the relationship between this man and Prudence,––“I’m sick of 151 farming. It’s too monotonous. Not only that; so long as mother lives I am little better than a hired man. Of course she’s very good,” he went on, as he noted a sudden lowering of his companion’s eyelids; “does no end for me, and all that sort of thing; but my salary goes nowhere with a man who has––well––who has hitherto had considerable resources. It’s no easy thing under the circumstances to keep my expenses down. It seems such nonsense, when one comes to think of it, that I, who will eventually own the farm, subject, of course, to some provision for Prue, have to put up with a trifling allowance doled out to me every month; it’s really monstrous. Who ever heard of a fellow living on one hundred dollars a month! That’s what I’m getting. Why, I owe more than five months’ wages at the Northern Union Hotel in Winnipeg. It can’t be done; that’s all about it.”
Iredale looked over at the dark face opposite him. Nor could he help drawing a comparison between the man and the two ladies who owned him, one as brother, the other as son. How utterly unlike them he was in every way. There was not the smallest resemblance in mind, face, or figure. His thoughts reverted to Silas Malling, and here they paused. Here was the resemblance of outward form; and he wondered what unfathomed depths had lain in the nature of the old farmer which could have communicated themselves in such developed form to the son. It was inconceivable that this indolent, selfish spendthrift could have inherited his nature from Silas Malling. No; he felt sure that some former ancestor must have been responsible for it. He understood 152 the drift of Hervey’s words in a twinkling. He had experienced this sort of thing before from other men. Now he did not discourage it.
“A hundred a month on the prairie should be a princely––er––wage,” he said in his grave way. “Of course it might be different in a city.”
“It is,” said Hervey decidedly. “I don’t know, I’m sure,” he went on, after a moment’s pause. “I suppose I must weather through somehow.”
He looked across at Iredale in such a definitely meaning way that the latter had no hesitation in speaking plainly. He knew it was money, and this was Prudence’s brother.