Thirty minutes after the happening of the incidents just related, a remarkable scene took place in Jack Gardner's smoking-room. There were present only the men of Sally's impromptu week-end party.
If the friends whom Jack Gardner had made since his sojourn in the East could have seen him at that moment, they would not have recognized in the coldly stern, keen-eyed copper magnate, the happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care Jack, of their acquaintance. The almost tragic occurrences of the evening had brought the real Jack Gardner to the surface, and he was for the moment again the dauntless young miner who had fought his way upward to the position he now held, by sheer force of character; for it requires a whole man to lift himself from the pick and shovel, and the drill and fuse, to the millionaire mine-owner and the person of prominence in the world such as he had become. He stood beside the small table at one end of the room; Morton occupied the center of it, facing him. Grouped around them, in various attitudes, were the others of that strange gathering. Duncan leaned idly against the mantel, and smoked his cigar with deliberation, although his gray eyes were coldly fierce in their expression, and his half-smile of utter contempt for the man who occupied the center of the scene rendered his face less handsome and attractive than usual. Malcolm Melvin was alert and attentive, from the end of the room opposite Gardner, and the other gentlemen of the party occupied chairs conveniently at hand.
It would be hard to define Richard Morton's attitude from any outward expression he manifested concerning it. He stood with folded arms, tall and straight, facing unflinchingly the accusing eyes of his life-long friend, Jack Gardner. His lips were shut tightly together, and he seemed like one who awaits stoically a verdict that is inevitable.
"Morton," said Gardner, speaking coldly and with studied deliberation, "you have been a life-long friend of mine, and, until to-night, I have looked upon you almost as a brother; but, to-night, by your own confession and by your acts which have followed upon that confession, you have destroyed every atom of the friendship I have felt for you. You have made me wish that I had never known you. You have outraged every sense of propriety, and every feeling of manhood that I thought you possessed. Fortunately for us all, no one is much the worse for your scoundrelism; I can call it by no other word. You have shown yourself to be, at heart, an unspeakable scoundrel, as undeserving of consideration as a coyote of the plains."