Peter was inside his hut examining a litter of auriferous soil on his table when Jim entered. This man’s home possessed an unique interior. It was such as one would hardly have expected in a bachelor in Barnriff. There were none of the usual impedimenta of a prairie man’s abode, there was no untidiness, no dirt, no makeshift. Yet like the man himself the place was simple and unpretentious.
There were other signs of the man in it, too. There was a large plain wooden bookcase filled to overflowing with a choice collection of reading matter. There were rows of classics in several languages, there was modern fiction of the better kind, there were many volumes of classical verse. In short it was the collection of a student, and might well have been a worthy addition to many a more elaborate library.
There were, besides this, several excellent pictures in water-color on the walls, and the absence of all tawdry decoration was conspicuous. Even the bed, the chair, and the table, plain enough, goodness knows, had an air of belonging to a man of unusual personality.
It would be impossible to describe adequately the manner in which the character of Peter Blunt peeped out at one from every corner of his home, nevertheless it did impress itself upon his every visitor. And its peculiar quality affected all alike. There was a strangely gentle strength about the man that had a way of silencing the most boisterously inclined. He had a quiet humor, too, that was often far too subtle for the cruder minds of Barnriff. But most of all his sympathy was a thing that 62 left no room for self in his thoughts. No one attempted undue familiarity with him; not that he would have been likely to actively resent it, but simply, in his presence nobody had any inclination that way. Nobody could have been more a part of the Barnriff community than Peter Blunt, and yet nobody could have been more apart from it.
Peter did not even look up from his labors when his visitor flung himself into the vacant chair. He silently went on with his examination of first one fragment of quartz and then another. And the man in the chair watched him with moody, introspective eyes. It was a long time before either spoke, and when, at last, the silence was broken, it was by Peter’s deep mellow voice.
“I’m looking for gold in a heap of dirt, Jim,” he said, without lifting his eyes. “It’s hard to find, there’s such a pile of the––dirt.”
“Why don’t you wash it?”
“Yes, I s’pose I ought to,” Peter allowed.
Then he glanced over, and his mild eyes focused themselves on the bottle protruding from Jim’s pocket. For some moments he contemplated it, and then he looked up into his friend’s face.
“How’s the ‘AZ’s’?” he inquired casually.