Brooke gasped, and felt his face becoming warm.
"I have very little practical experience of mining, sir," he said.
Devine nodded tranquilly. "Allonby has enough for two, but he lets up and loses his grip when the whisky comes along," he said. "Still, I guess you have got something that's worth rather more to me. You couldn't help having it. It was born in you."
Brooke sat silent for a space, with an unpleasant realization of the fact that Devine's keen eyes were watching him. He had come there with the intention of severing his connection with the man, and now that astonishing offer had been made him in the very room he had not long ago crept into with the purpose of plundering him. Every detail of what had happened on that eventful night came back to him, and he remembered, with a sickening sense of degradation, how he had leaned upon the table where Devine was sitting then and permitted the startled girl to force her thanks on him. Then he raised his head, as Devine, turning a little, looked at him with disconcerting steadiness.
"You have more reasons than the one you gave me for not taking hold?" he said.
Suddenly, Brooke made up his mind. He was sick of the career of deception, and had already meant to put an end to it, while he now seized upon the opportunity of placing a continuance in it out of the question.
"I have, and can't help fancying that one of them is a tolerably good one," he said. "You see, you really know very little about me."
"Go on," said Devine, drily. "I'm generally quite willing to back my opinion of a mine or man. Besides, I have picked up one or two pointers about you."
"Still," said Brooke, very slowly, while his face grew set, "you don't know why I came here to build that flume for you."
Then he gasped with astonishment, for Devine laughed.
Brooke, who lost command of himself, rose abruptly, and stood looking down on him, with one quivering hand clenched on the edge of the table.
"You know I meant to jump the claim?" he said.
Then there was a curious silence, and the two men remained motionless, looking at one another for a space, the younger one leaning somewhat heavily upon the table, with the crimson showing through the bronze in his face, the elder one watching him with a little grim smile. There was also a suggestion of sardonic amusement in it at which the other winced, as he would scarcely have done had Devine struck him.