Brooke shook his head, though her confidence in him, as well as her optimism, had its due effect. "I wish I was a little more sure," he said. "The difficulty, as I think I once pointed out, is that one needs dollars to make a fair start with." "They are, at least, not indispensable, as the history of most of the men who have done anything worth while in the province shows. Isn't there a certain satisfaction in starting with everything against one?" "Afterwards, perhaps. That is, if one struggles through. There is, however, one learns by experience, really very little satisfaction at the time, especially if one scarcely gets beyond the start at all." Barbara smiled a little, though she looked at him steadily. "You," she said, "will, I think, go a long way. In fact, if it was a sword I gave you, I should expect it of you." Brooke came very near losing his head just then, though he realized that, after all, the words implied little more than a belief in his capabilities, and for a few insensate moments he almost decided to stay at the Canopus and make the most of his opportunities. Saxton, he reflected, might put sufficient pressure upon Devine to extort the six thousand dollars from him without the necessity for his part becoming apparent at all. With that sum in his hands there was, he felt, very little he could not attain, and then he shook off the deluding fancy, for it once more became apparent that the deed, which gave Saxton the hold he wished for upon Devine would, even if she never heard of it, stand as barrier between Barbara Heathcote and him. "One feels inclined to wonder now and then whether success does not occasionally, at least, cost the man who achieves it more than it is worth," he said. "The actual record of the leaders one is expected to look up to might, in that connection, provide one with a fund of somewhat astonishing information." Barbara made a little gesture of impatience. "Is the poor man the only one who can be honest?" "One would, at least, feel inclined to fancy that the man who is unduly honest runs a serious risk of remaining poor." "I think that is an argument I have very little sympathy with," said Barbara. "It is, you see, so easy for the incapable to impeach the successful man's honesty. I might even go a little further and admit that it is an attitude I scarcely expected from you." Brooke smiled somewhat bitterly. "You will, however, remember that I have made no attempt to persuade you of my own integrity." Just then, as it happened, Mrs. Devine came into the verandah with a packet in her hand. "These are the papers the man tried to steal," she said. "Since you insist upon going back to the canyon to-day I wonder if you would take care of them?" Brooke gasped, and felt the veins swell on his forehead as he looked at her. "You wish me to take them away?"