The blood rose to the girl's face, but remembering that the major occasionally displayed some little penetration she contrived to keep silent, though this was by no means easy. Coulthurst, however, nodded.
"I scarcely think it is," he said, with a trace of dryness. "As I pointed out once before, you do not seem to remember that I occasionally had Mr. Sewell and Ingleby here."
"I'm afraid I didn't--I'm sorry, sir," said Esmond. "Of course, I should have done so. One could almost have fancied that they were here frequently."
Again Grace said nothing, though it cost her a stronger effort, and the major did not appear to notice the younger man's sardonic smile.
"Since you don't seem to care for my suggestion, have you any notions of your own?"
"I haven't, which is partly why I came to you. If I could only find a way of getting word to Victoria and a few more troopers in, it would be easy to bring them to reason. As it is, I have sense enough to realize that nobody would thank me for forcing a contest that could only end in disaster and the subsequent sending up of a battalion of Canadian militia. The miners are twenty to one, you see."
Again Coulthurst nodded. "You are right in one respect," he said. "Personally, I shouldn't care to undertake the thing with less than three or four strong companies, and I'm not sure I could get in then. Well, since a compromise appears out of the question, you can only wait events."
"That is the difficulty. I can't wait too long. We're on full rations still, but stores are getting low and certainly won't last until the thaw sets in. Of course, if affairs had been different, I could have hired enough of the fellows to break out a trail."
Perhaps the major did not intend it, but he looked at Grace, and saw comprehension of his thoughts in her eyes. They were not on full rations, or anything approaching it, at the Gold Commissioner's house, and a few of the comforts Esmond could have spared would have been worth a good deal to them. He was in some respects not an ungenerous man, but though he must, Grace fancied, have seen how meagrely they fared, such a course had evidently never suggested itself to him, and in that fact lay the sting. He rose to go, in another minute or two, but just then there was a knocking at the door, which swung open a moment later, and Grace gasped as she saw Ingleby standing on the threshold with a heavy case in his hands.