"I don't want to go, Hetty, but it can't be helped," he said. "Of course, I'll come back often in the evenings."
Hetty did not move out of the shadow, and though Ingleby did not seem to notice it there was a curious hardness in her voice.
"Well," she said quietly, "I suppose you know best."
Ingleby turned away, and shook himself in a fashion that suggested relief as he swung down the trail. He had left a good deal behind him, and it was a hard thing he had done, much harder, in fact, than he had ever anticipated; but he could not live on the bounty of a girl. For all that, he shrank from the loneliness of the life before him, and his fancy would dwell upon the evenings he had spent with Hetty and Leger beside the crackling fire. Hetty was by no means clever--at least, in some respects; but he did not expect her to be so, and where she was there was also cheerfulness and tranquillity. Now the bush in front of him seemed very black and lonely.
He had scarcely disappeared when Hetty, rising slowly, crumpled a strip of paper in her hand and flung it into the fire. As it happened, it fell upon the side of one of the logs a little distance from the hottest blaze, and Leger made a little instinctive movement, and then sat still again.
"I suppose you realize what that is?" he said.
"Yes," said Hetty, whose face showed flushed in the flickering light, "it is a five-dollar bill."
Leger looked at her sharply, and then laughed. "Well," he said, "I suppose you can afford it--and, after all, I'm not sure it isn't the best thing you could do with it."
Hetty said nothing but went into the shanty, and it was next morning before Leger, who looked very thoughtful as he sat beside the fire, saw any more of her. He had already realized that the possession of a pretty sister is a responsibility.
For a week or two afterwards Ingleby alternately assisted Tomlinson in the building of a flume and worked on his claim, but it was, perhaps, fortunate that he had now shaken off the fierce impatience which had driven him to overtax his strength when hope was strong in him. Indeed, of late a curious lassitude had crept upon him, though he still toiled on; and it was only the fact that provisions were a consideration which induced him to accompany Sewell and Tomlinson on an expedition to look for a black-tail deer.