For the space of several minutes the line swept up and down the pool, and Miss Deringham watched it almost breathlessly with fingers on the reel. Then it swept straight towards the fallen fir.

"Stop him!" said Alton. "It's a good trace. Keep the butt down."

The rod bent further, a big silvery body rushed clear of the water and went down again, while next moment the line stopped and quivered as it rasped against the fallen fir. Miss Deringham turned to her companion with a gesture of consternation.

"Oh!" she said breathlessly. "It has gone."

"I don't know," said Alton, "That trace is a good deal thicker than what you use in England. I'll see if I can get him. Keep your thumb on the reel."

He took up a net, and clambering along the ledge sprang lightly upon the log. It was sharply rounded, the bark was wet, and the way along it obstructed by the stake-like ends of torn-off limbs, but the man crawled forward foot by foot with the swift whirl of current close beneath him. Then he knelt where the tree dipped almost level with the flood, and grasping the line with one hand swept the net in and out amidst the broken-off branches, while the girl watching him fancied she could see a bright flash between the splashes. Presently he rose again shaking his head, with nothing in the net.

"Give me a yard or two when I shout," he said.

Grasping a branch with one hand he lay down on the log, and lowered himself until arm and shoulder were in the river. Then he sank still further until his head was under too, and the girl shivered a little.

It seemed to her that it would be difficult for even a good swimmer to extricate himself from the tangle of snapped-off branches between the log and the bottom of the river. Still, the clinging foot and arm were visible above the rush of frothing water. Then more of the man came into sight again, there was a half-smothered shout, and she loosed the reel, while in another moment or two Alton swung himself up dripping with part of one hand apparently thrust into a great flapping fish's head. With the back of it pressed gainst his knee he drew the head towards him, and the long silvery body became still, while the man stood up smiling.

"Fingers were made before nets, but I wasn't quite sure of him all the time," he said.

Miss Deringham, who was flushed and breathless, felt very gracious towards her companion just then. It was, she realized, a somewhat perilous thing he had done to please her, and this was gratifying in itself, while the knowledge that he had postponed several affairs which demanded his attention was more flattering still. He was also, in such surroundings, almost admirable as he stood before her bareheaded and dripping, the river frothing at his feet and the sliding mists behind him. Deerskin jacket and stained and faded jean, lean, sinewy figure, and bronzed face were all in keeping with the spirit of the scene.

Then a voice came out of the bush.

"Hallo, Harry! Are you anywhere around?" it said.

Alton answered, and Miss Deringham felt distinctly displeased. She had been about to say something delicately apposite, and now Seaforth, whose company she could have dispensed with, stood on the bank above them, apparently quietly amused.

"You seem to be enjoying yourself, Harry," he said.

"Well," said Alton a trifle curtly, "you didn't come keeyowling through the bush like a prairie coyote to tell me that?"

"No," said Seaforth, with a sudden change in his voice which Miss Deringham noticed. "There's a man in from the settlement, and Hallam's selling Townshead up to-day according to his tale."

Alton scrambled swiftly along the log. "Just one question, Charley.

Quite sure nobody came here with any message for me about it that you forgot?" he said.

Seaforth made a little gesture of impatience, and there was a trace of anger in his tone. "It is scarcely likely I should have forgotten that," he said.

Then he glanced at Miss Deringham, and was slightly bewildered by what he saw in her face. Seaforth had once or twice admired the girl's serenity in somewhat difficult surroundings, but there was now a suggestion of fear in her eyes, and she seemed to avoid Alton's gaze.

It, however, passed in a moment, and she turned towards the rancher tranquilly.

"I wonder how far I am to blame," she said. "A man came here a day or two ago, and apparently endeavoured to tell me something. He was, however, unintelligible, and I fancy somebody had been giving him whisky."

"Mounted?" said Alton. "What kind of horse?"

Miss Deringham considered for a moment, and then possibly deciding that Alton would have no difficulty in ascertaining elsewhere, told him.

"Tom!" he said grimly. "Well, I'll talk to him. You'll take Miss Deringham home, Charley, and then come on to Townshead's after me."

He swung away into the bush next moment, and Seaforth followed him more slowly with Miss Deringham. Neither of them spoke, but though the man's thoughts were busy with other affairs, he noticed that his companion glanced at him covertly. "The girl could have told us something more," he said to himself, and put a stern check on his impatience as he kept pace with her.

When they came out into the clearing they heard the thud of hoofs, and saw a mounted man send a horse at the tall split fence. The slip-rails were up, and the fence was unusually well put together, but there was a crash as the top bar flew apart, and presently the thud of hoofs grew fainter down the fir-shadowed trail. Miss Deringham now appeared quite serene again.

"Has he ridden off wet through as he was?" she said.

"I expect so," said Seaforth dryly. "Harry does not usually let trifles of that kind worry him, nor do I think there are many men who would have ridden at that fence."

Alice Deringham said nothing, but though she smiled Seaforth fancied that she was not pleased. Her thoughts were, however, of small importance to him, and he hastened fuming with impatience towards the stables.

It was some time later when Nellie Townshead stood by a window of her father's ranch. Jean-clad stock breeders and axemen hung about the clearing, and a little knot of men from the cities stood apart from them. A wagon, implements out of repair, old sets of harness, axes, saws, and shovels were littered about the front of the house, and there were two or three horses and a few poor cattle in the corral. The ranchers spoke slowly to one another, and their faces were sombre, but Hallam, who stood amidst the other men, was smiling over a big cigar.

The girl clenched her hands as she watched him, and then turning her head looked down the valley.

"I fancy I hear hoofs. He told me he would come," she said, but Townshead, who sat apathetically in the old leather chair, shook his head.

"He has, of course, forgotten if he did," he said.

"No," said the girl with a trace of harshness in her voice. "Mr. Alton never forgets a promise. That must be the drumming of hoofs. Can you hear nothing?"

"The river," said Townshead despondently. "He will be too late directly. They are putting up the ranch."

Confidence and dismay seemed to struggle together in the face of the girl, but the former rose uppermost, for she clung fast to hope.

"There! Oh, why can they not stop talking? That is something now,"

she said.

"No," said Townshead. "Only the wind in the firs."

The girl leaned forward a little, drawing in her breath as she stared down the valley. The voices drowned the sound she fancied she had heard, and the colour came and went in her face when she caught one of them. "The thing's no better than robbery. Why isn't Harry Alton or his partner here?"

Nellie Townshead had asked herself the same question over and over again that day when rancher and axemen in somewhat embarrassed fashion tendered her their sympathy. What she expected from him she did not quite know, but she had a curious confidence in Alton, and at least as much in his comrade, and felt that even if the scheme her father had alluded to was not feasible there would be something they could do.

Then she drew back from the window and sat down, with a little shiver as the harsh voice of the auctioneer rose from the clearing. She caught disjointed words and sentences.

"Don't need tell you what the place is worth. You have seen the boundaries. Richest soil in the Dominion. Grow anything. Now if I was a rancher. Well, I'm waiting for your offer."

He apparently waited some little time, and then a laugh that expressed bitterness in place of merriment followed the voice of one of the men from the cities.

"Put two hundred dollars on to it," said somebody, and there was another laugh, which the girl, recognizing the voice, understood; for it was known that the bidder had probably not ten dollars in his possession and was in debt at the store. The fact that this man whom she had scarcely spoken to should endeavour to help her while her friends at Somasco did nothing also brought a little flash of anger to her eyes. Then she told herself that there was time yet, and they would come.

The voices rose again more rapidly. "Fifty more. Another to me. Oh, what's the use of fooling. One hundred better. Twenty again to me."

Miss Townshead glanced at her father. "They'll stop presently," said he. "The place stands at a third of its value, but it would cripple most of them to pay for it if they got it now. The man from Vancouver who goes up by twenties will get it at half of what it cost me, and I don't think you need watch for rancher Alton."

Still Nellie Townshead did not quite give up hope. The bidding was only beginning, and there was time yet. She had been taught to look beneath the surface in Western Canada, and had cherished a curious respect for rancher Alton. The girl was young still, and he stood for her as a romantic ideal of the new manhood that was to grow to greatness in the wildest province of the Dominion, while now and then she fancied she saw something in his comrade's face which roused her pity and stirred her to sympathy. That, having made it unasked, the former should slight a promise of the kind appeared incomprehensible and she felt that if he did so her faith in the type he served as an example of would fall with him. There was also pressing need of some one to look to for guidance in her time of necessity, because Townshead was not the man to grapple with any difficulty, and most of his neighbours knew little or nothing about the cities.

"Father," she said, "in case the purchaser turns us out where shall we go to-night? The stage does not go in to the railroad until a week to-day, and do you think there will be anything left over to keep us for a little in Vancouver?"

Townshead glanced at her querulously. "Somebody will take us in," said he. "I should have fancied, my dear, that you would have seen I am sufficiently distressed and unwell to-day without having to anticipate further difficulties. There will, I hope, be a balance. What is the bidding now?"

The girl listened, but for a few moments there was a significant silence, and her heart sank when a single voice rose. One or two others joined in, and there was silence again until the auctioneer repeated the offer. Then she turned quivering towards her father.

"You heard him?" she said.