Читать книгу The Last Chance: A Tale of the Golden West онлайн

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‘With hardly an exception—gentle or simple—I do not know a man whose word I would more absolutely trust, and I have known him for ten years or more.’

‘You think the specimens beyond all doubt the richest you have ever seen? Remember those in the “Coming Event.”’

‘Yes, they were good—though nothing to these. I’m almost sorry I didn’t bring them home with me. I left them in the office safe, to be quite sure.’

‘You are to have a half share also, and the old man wills the whole to you, in case of accidents? That looks well.’

‘I’m sure if you saw him, and them, you would think more of the affair.’

‘Very likely—(thoughtfully). Now, suppose you drive in to-morrow, instead of riding, and take me to lunch with Mrs.Herbert? I can see old Waters and drop into the Bank besides. Then I’ll say what I propose. I’d like to think it over—and now, it’s nearly bedtime—I suppose you want to smoke?’

Mr.Banneret was a reasonable, though not an ssss1 inveterate smoker. He told himself that if ever a man needed the great sedative and composer of thought, this was one of the periods specially suggested by Fate. So he sat for nearly an hour before the fire in the dining-room, and meditatively smoked a couple of pipes of ‘rough cut,’ after which, his habitation being within a few miles of a populous goldfield, and not in a highly civilised and police-guarded city, he went to bed without locking a door or securing a window.