"Like a brother. For two years we have worked together in our search for the mother lode that both believed lay concealed deep within the bosom of these hills. A dozen times during those two years our hopes have risen, as only the hopes can rise, of those who seek gold. A dozen times it seemed certain that at last we had reached our goal. But, always it was the same--a false lead--shattered hopes--and a fresh start. Those were the times, Miss Sinclair, that your father showed the stuff that was in him. He was a better man than I. It was his Spartan acceptance of disappointment, his optimism, and his unshaken faith in ultimate success, that kept me going. I suppose it is my French ancestry that is responsible for my lack of just the qualities that made your father the man he was. I lacked his stability--his balance. I had imagination--vision, possibly greater than his. And under the stimulus of apparent success, my spirits would rise to heights his never knew. But I paid for it--no one knows how bitterly I paid. For when apparent success turned into failure, mine were depths of despair he never descended to. At first, before I learned that his disappointment was as bitter as my own, his smiling acceptance of failure, used to goad me to fury. There were times I could have killed him with pleasure--but that was only at first. Before we had been long together God knows how I came to depend on those smiles. Then, at last, we struck it--and poor Rod--" The man's voice which had dropped very low, broke suddenly. He cleared his throat and turning abruptly, stared out the door toward the green sweep of pines on the mountain slopes.
There was a long silence during which the words kept repeating themselves in the girl's brain. "_Then, at last, we struck it._" What did he mean? His back was toward her, and she saw that the muscles of his neck worked slowly, as though he were swallowing repeatedly.
When at last she spoke, her voice sounded strangely dull to her own ears. "Do you mean that you and my father were partners, and that you know the location of his mine?"
Bethune faced her, laying the belt gently upon the table. "Partners?" He repeated the word as though questioning himself. "Hardly partners, I should say. We were--it is hard to define the exact relationship that existed between Rod Sinclair and me. There was never any agreement of partnership, rather a sort of tacit understanding, that when we struck the lode, we should work it together. Your father knew vastly more about rock than I, although I had long suspected the existence of this lode. But extensive interests to the northward prevented me from making any continued search for it. However, I found time at intervals to spend a month or six weeks in these hills, and it was upon one of these occasions that we struck up the acquaintance that ripened into a sort of mutuality of interest. Neighbors are few and far between in the hill country, and those not exactly of the type that attract men of education. I think each found in the other a man of his own stripe, and thus a friendship sprang up between us that gradually led to a merging of interests. His were by far the most valuable activities in the field, while I, from time to time, advanced certain funds for the carrying on of the work.