The only thing noticeably unusual in his habits was a certain avoidance of the Falcon Hotel and the society of womankind; and this, of course, was very well understood. It was natural that a man under a storm-cloud that might burst any moment and blot him out should wish to keep out of the range of women's emotional sympathy. Men's sympathy is of a different calibre. Even when it is a practical, living thing that can be felt and built on, it is often almost cold-bloodedly inarticulate and undemonstrative, which is the only kind of sympathy acceptable to a man in trouble, especially a man of Druro's type, who did not want to discuss the thing at all, but just to take what was coming to him with a stiff lip.
One good result of it all was that now, at last, his mine was getting a little attention. Once more he donned blue overalls and a black face and embroidered his pants with cyanide burns. And Emma Guthrie was content, or as content as Emma Guthrie could be. Rumour now said that crushing would be commenced on the mine in two months' time, and that ten stamps were to be added to the milling-plant already existing. This looked good for Druro's financial prospects, however gloomy his social ones might be. But he never talked. Emma Guthrie was the man who did all the bucking about the mine and its future. Rumour did the rest handsomely, and it was unanimously accorded that fate would be playing a shady trick indeed on Lundi Druro if, just when his future was painting itself in scarlet and gold with purple splashes, he was to be put out of the game by the death of a waster like Capperne.
On the day, then, that Capperne was at last pronounced to be out of the wood, there was almost general rejoicing in Wankelo. The little township threw its hat up into the air, and everyone burst into bubbles of relief and gaiety. In the club and hotels men valiantly "breasted the bar," vying with each other in the liquid celebration of Druro's triumph and the defeat of the enemy at Glendora, and all the women rushed to tea at the "Falcon" to discuss the news and, incidentally, to see how Mrs. Hading took it, and whether any further developments would now arise with regard to herself and Druro.