"You are," he said, a trifle quickly, "by no means an entertaining companion for a man who is at times too sensible of the irony of his position, and appear to be without either comprehension or sympathy. Here am I, who was accustomed to fare sumptuously in London clubs, living on the husks and other metaphorical et ceteras, and endeavoring--for that is all it amounts to--to console myself with profitless reflections. I am, of course, in the elegant simile of the country, a tank, or whisky-skin, but I am still a man who found a fortune and stripped himself of everything but whisky to develop it." Brooke laughed to conceal his impatience. "Then you are as sure as ever about the silver? We have got a good way down without finding very much sign of it." Allonby rose, with a little flush in his watery eyes, and leaned, somewhat unsteadily, upon the table. "It is the one thing I believe in. The rest, and I once had my fancies and theories like other men, are shadows and chimeras now. Only the silver is real--and there. All I made in Canada is sunk in this mine, which no longer belongs to me, and when I make the great discovery not a dollar will fall to my share." "Then it is a little difficult to understand what you are so anxious to find the silver for." Allonby swayed a trifle on his feet, but the gleam in his eyes grew brighter. "You," he said, "are, as I pointed out, curiously deficient in comprehension, but you never won a case of medals that were coveted by the keenest brains among all those who hoped to enter your profession. Of what use are dollars to a whisky-tank who will, in all probability, be found mangled at the bottom of the shaft one day? Still, when I made the calculations we are now working on, there was no man in the province with a knowledge equal to mine, and I ask no more than to prove them right." Brooke sat silent, because he could think of nothing appropriate to say. He had asked the question lightly, and had got his answer. It made the attitude of this broken-down wreck of humanity plain to him, and he vaguely realized the pathos underlying it. Possessed by the one fancy, the man had lost or flung away all that life might have offered him, while he clung to the apparently worthless mine, not, it seemed, for the dollars that success might bring him, but from pride in his professional skill and the faculties which had long deserted him. That, as he said, was his one point of faith, and he lived only to vindicate it. Then Allonby lurched unsteadily to the door, and held his hand up as he opened it. "Listen!" he said. "Is that the mail carrier? I must know when we'll get those drills and the giant powder before I sleep. The sinking goes on slowly, and life is very uncertain when one drinks whisky as I do."