For an instant the mine owner defiantly met his look, and then half-rose from his chair, and stared more coldly across the litter of papers, plans, and impedimenta on his desk.
“Then why are you here together?” he demanded. “Weren’t you man enough to come yourself, instead of taking my daughter underground? Did you want to compel her to be the chief witness in your claim? What right had you to––?”
“Father!” admonished Joan’s voice.
It served a double purpose, for had she not interrupted Dick might have answered with a heat that he would have regretted, and Bully Presby dropped back into his chair, and drummed with his fingers on the desk.
“You took the ore. You must pay. You must!” went on the dull voice of his daughter.
“But how should I know how much it amounts to, even if I do find out that some of my men drove into the Cross pay?” he answered, fixing her with his flaming eyes.
“But you must know,” she insisted dully. “I know you know. I know you knew where the ore was coming from. It must be paid back.”
For an instant they eyed each other defiantly, and her brave attitude, uncompromising, seemed to lower the flood-gates of his anger. His cheeks flushed, and he lowered his head still farther, and stared more coldly from under the brim of his square-set hat. There were not many men who would have faced Bully Presby when he was in that mood; but before him stood his daughter, as brave and uncompromising as he, and fortified by something that he had allowed to run dwarf in his soul––a white conscience, burning undimmed, a true knowledge of what was right and what was wrong. Her inheritance of brain and blood had all the strength of his, and her fearlessness was his own. She did not waver, or bend.
“It must be paid back,” she reiterated, a little more firmly.