It was evening the next day when I reached Bonaventure, and was shown into the presence of its owner, who had lately returned there from the East. He looked haggard, and did not rise out of the chair he lounged in, though his voice was cordial. "You have been successful, Ormesby. I can see it by your face," he said.
"I have, sir," I answered. "More so than I dared to hope, and I fancy you will be astonished when you count these bills. The Bonaventure draft played a leading part in my release, and now I find it difficult to realize that the luck has changed at last."
It was not quite dark outside, but the curtains were drawn, and Haldane sat beside a table littered with papers under a silver reading-lamp. His face looked curiously ascetic and thin, but the smile in his keen eyes was genial. Boone sat opposite him smoking, and nodded good-humoredly to me.
"You will soon get used to prosperity, and there is no occasion for gratitude," Haldane said, tossing the roll of paper money across the table, but taking up the account I laid beside it. "I notice that you have earned me a profit of twenty per cent. You have tolerable business talents in your own direction, Ormesby, and I shall expect your good counsel in the practical management of Bonaventure which I have undertaken."
"The management of Bonaventure?" I said, and Haldane's forehead grew wrinkled as he nodded.
"Exactly. The verdict has been given. No more exciting corners or supposititious heaping up of unearned increments for me. I am sentenced by the specialists to a dormant life and open-air exercise, and have accordingly chosen the rearing of cattle on the salubrious prairie."
I guessed what that sentence meant to a man of his energies; but he had accepted it gracefully, and I was almost startled when he said: "Do you know that I envied you, Ormesby, even when things looked worst for you?"
I could only murmur a few not overappropriate words of sympathy, though I fancied that had Haldane been under the same grip he might have envied me less.
"It takes time to grow used to idleness, which is why I sent for you to-night," he said, with a swift resumption of his usual tone. "I purpose to teach Lane that he is not altogether so omnipotent as he believes himself--partly by way of amusement and to forward certain views of my own, and partly because my younger daughter insists that he is a menace to every honest man on the prairie. Boone appears inclined to agree with her."