Brooke listened, and, for a time, heard only the splash from the pine boughs and the patter of the rain, while Allonby's frail figure cut against the white mists that slid past the doorway. Then a faint, measured thudding came up the valley, and he remembered afterwards that he felt a curious sense of anticipation. The sound swelled into the beat of horse hoofs floundering and slipping on the wet gravel, and Brooke smiled at his eagerness, for though he had, he fancied, cut himself off from all that concerned his past in England, he had never been quite able to await the approach of a mail carrier with complete indifference, and he felt the suggestiveness of the drumming of the weary horse's feet. There had been a time when he had listened with beating heart while it drew nearer down the shadowy trail, and once more a little thrill ran through him. Then there was a clatter of hoofs on wet rock, and a shout, as a man pulled his jaded beast up in the darkness outside, while a dripping packet was flung into the room. Brooke could see nobody, but a voice said, "That's your lot; I guess I can't stop. Got to make Truscott's before I sleep, and the beast's gone lame." The rattle of hoofs commenced again, and Brooke sat idly watching Allonby, who was tearing open the packet with shaky fingers. "The tools and powder are coming up," he said. "Hallo! Excuse my inadvertence, Brooke. This one's apparently for you." Brooke caught the big blue envelope tossed across to him, and when he had taken out several precisely folded papers and glanced at the sheet of stiff legal writing, sat still, staring vacantly straight in front of him. The uncleanly shanty faded from before his eyes, and he was not even conscious that Allonby, who had laid down his own correspondence, was watching him until the latter broke the silence. "I know that style of envelope, but it is, presumably, too long since you left England for it to contain any unpleasant reference to a debt," he said. "Has somebody been leaving you a fortune?" Brooke smiled in a curious, listless fashion. "No," he said, "not a fortune. Still, I suppose one could almost consider it a competence." "Then you appear singularly free from the satisfaction one would naturally expect from a man who had just received any news of that description," said Allonby, drily. Brooke's face grew suddenly grim. "If it had come a little earlier, it might have been of much more use to me."