He had, however, better grounds for feeling depressed.  His employers trusted him, and actuated by loyalty as well as professional pride, he had resolved to make their rather daring venture a success.  Now this looked difficult.  Money was scarce, and he found credit strangely hard to get.  The mining speculators he called upon received him coldly, and although he had a warmer welcome from the manufacturers of giant-powder and rock-boring machines, they demanded prompt payment for their goods.  When Thirlwell stated that this was impossible they told him to come again.

It was known that there was silver in the rocks that run back into the North-West Territories, but nobody had found ore that would pay for refining.  The rich strike in Ontario had not been made yet, and the prospectors who pushed into the forests with drill and dynamite were regarded as rash enthusiasts.  Bankers were cautious, and declined to accept rusty mining plant and a shaft in the wilderness as good security.

On the evening before he left Montreal, Thirlwell sat in the hall of his hotel, listening to the clanging street-cars and the rattle of the Grand Trunk trains.  Poisoned flies dropped upon the tables and an electric fan made an unpleasant whirring as it churned the humid air.  Had his mood been normal the heat and noise would not have disturbed Thirlwell, but now they jarred.

His visit had been a failure, and his employers must develop the mine without the help of the latest machines.  He doubted if they could finance the undertaking until they struck the vein.  Then it looked as if he had been rash to reject Sir James’s offer.  He had thrown away a chance of winning prosperity and perhaps fame in England, for he knew he had some talent and he was ambitious.  Instead he had chosen exhausting labor and stern self-denial in the wilds.  The life had some compensations, but they were not very obvious then.  It was, however, too late for regrets; he had chosen and must be content, and putting down the newspaper he was trying to read, he went to bed.

Two days later he sat in the garden of a new summer hotel on the shore of Lake Huron.  A pine forest rolled down to the water past the pretty wooden building, and the air in the shade was cool and sweet with resinous smells.  The lake glittered, smooth as glass, in the hot sun, but here and there a wandering breeze traced a dark-blue line across the placid surface.  Along the beach the shadows of the pines floated motionless.

Thirlwell smoked and meditated on the errand that had brought him to the hotel.  The clerk had told him that Miss Strange was on the beach, but he had not seen her yet and felt some curiosity about the girl whom he had arranged to meet.  They had corresponded and he had brought a photograph he thought she would like to see, but on the whole he would sooner she had not asked for the interview.  She might find it painful to hear the story he had to tell, and the thing would require some tact, more perhaps than he had.