Then there was a clatter of hoofs on wet rock, and a shout, as a man pulled his jaded beast up in the darkness outside, while a dripping packet was flung into the room. Brooke could see nobody, but a voice said, "That's your lot; I guess I can't stop. Got to make Truscott's before I sleep, and the beast's gone lame."
The rattle of hoofs commenced again, and Brooke sat idly watching Allonby, who was tearing open the packet with shaky fingers.
"The tools and powder are coming up," he said. "Hallo! Excuse my inadvertence, Brooke. This one's apparently for you."
Brooke caught the big blue envelope tossed across to him, and when he had taken out several precisely folded papers and glanced at the sheet of stiff legal writing, sat still, staring vacantly straight in front of him. The uncleanly shanty faded from before his eyes, and he was not even conscious that Allonby, who had laid down his own correspondence, was watching him until the latter broke the silence.
"I know that style of envelope, but it is, presumably, too long since you left England for it to contain any unpleasant reference to a debt," he said. "Has somebody been leaving you a fortune?"
Brooke smiled in a curious, listless fashion. "No," he said, "not a fortune. Still, I suppose one could almost consider it a competence."
"Then you appear singularly free from the satisfaction one would naturally expect from a man who had just received any news of that description," said Allonby, drily.
Brooke's face grew suddenly grim. "If it had come a little earlier, it might have been of much more use to me."
Allonby had, apparently, sufficient sense left in him to recognize that any further observations he might feel inclined to make were scarcely likely to be appreciated just then, and once more Brooke sat motionless, with the letter in his hand, and the inclosures that had slipped from his fingers strewn about the floor. He had been left with what any one with simple tastes would have considered a moderate competence, at least, in Canada, by the man he had quarrelled with, and he gathered from the lawyer's letter that, if he wished it, there would be no difficulty in at once realizing the property. It naturally amounted to considerably more than the six thousand dollars he had sold his self-respect for, and at the moment he was only sensible of a bitter regret that the news had not come to hand a little earlier.