The girl's pulses throbbed a little faster as she spoke, and there was nothing in the man's face which escaped her attention. Again the curious glint became apparent in his eyes, and the warm bronze a little deeper in tint.

"I might raise some dollars on Carnaby, but I don't want to," he said.

Miss Deringham had seen sufficient, and decided to change the topic.

"So you intend to find the silver?" she said.

"Yes," said Alton simply. "I feel I have got to do that--first."

There was a significant silence, and the girl leaned back in her chair, conscious without resentment that the man was watching her. Her eyes were softer than usual, the faintest trace of colour showed in her cheek, while the light evening dress emphasized the fine sweep of curve and line that was further accentuated by her pose. The lamp that hung above her smote a track of brightness athwart her red-gold hair, until she slightly moved her head so that while part of the full round neck showed in its snowy whiteness her face was in the shadow.

"I think you will be successful. I hope you will," she said.

It was evident that the man understood all that was meant, but he rose with an apparent effort. "And now I have a good deal to do," he said.

Alice Deringham also rose with a little stateliness, and when he had gone out sank down contemplatively into the chair again. Her hands lay open in her lap, and it is possible that she saw nothing of the sewing they rested on as she grappled with the question why had the man told her what he had done. There were two apparent reasons, for Alice Deringham realized that there was a certain greatness behind his simplicity. Granting that, she could see his standpoint clearly, though it was more difficult to understand why such a man had made it evident to her. He was, she knew, not one to stoop even to win a woman's good opinion, and would have seen that in this direction silence became him best, unless he felt that while so much was due to honour there was something due to her.

He had told her simply that it was not to please himself he was going out to look for the silver just then, and the deduction was that the expedition had no attractions for him because he wished to stay at the ranch. Allowing that, the revelation of his motive had not been purposeless. It was only his responsibility drove him away from her, and there was a vague but effective compliment in the implication that she would recognize it. Still, this train of reasoning had led Alice Deringham far enough, and she sought distraction from it in her embroidery, which during the next hour progressed but indifferently.

It was a day or two later when Alton drew Deringham into his room when he came in bemired all over from the settlement, and the financier noticed that the table and most of the floor was littered with books, survey plans, and miscellaneous papers.

"I'll have to leave this place for a little," he said. "I'm going up to find the silver, but the ranch and all that's in it is at your service just as long as it pleases you. If all goes as I expect it, I shall be back in a month or so, and would be glad to find you still at Somasco. Then, if you are ready, Charley and I will go back to the old country with you. A lawyer in Vancouver has written to an English accountant for me, and with him to help us we can fix up all about Carnaby."

Now Deringham had up to that moment still retained a hope that he could arrive at an understanding with Alton respecting Carnaby on the spot.

As it was, unless he could gain time, exposure and even worse things stared him in the face. It had been comparatively simple to hoodwink his co-trustee, but it would be very different with an accountant of reputation, and he had also grown afraid of Alton's instinctive grasp of whatever subject he turned his attention to. There was, of course, much the rancher did not know, but that left him with attention the more concentrated upon issues of importance.

Deringham, however, showed but little evidence of dismay or astonishment. Had he been liable to do so, he would not have held his own so long in the occupation he followed. His breath came a trifle more quickly, and his hand trembled a little, but he rested it upon the table, and all that Alton noticed was a curious little movement about the corner of his eyes. The rancher, however, remembered it.

"Well," said Deringham, "I must endeavour if possible to return to England with you. When you spoke of being away a month you seemed to contemplate a possibility of being absent longer."

Alton nodded. "I did," he said. "The man who found the silver is lying up there still, but I've provided for anything of that kind happening to me, as you will see in a day or two. Now I don't think we need worry any more until we get to Carnaby."

Deringham made a gesture of concurrence, but the grim irony of Alton's speech occurred to him as he went out to grapple with his torturing anxiety. At first he could scarcely think of anything consecutively, and once more the picture of a man hanging by a juniper-bush with a river frothing down the gorge below rose up persistently before his memory. It was replaced by another of a grim silent figure keeping watch with eyes that never ceased their fixed stare beside a frozen trail.

On the second day afterwards he sauntered into Horton's store and found Hallam there. The mining speculator appeared ironically amused, the storekeeper flushed and savage, but when Hallam turned to Deringham there was something in his manner that suggested they had not met by accident.

"I've been telling the storekeeper not to lay in too many Somascos just yet, and have got to put in the time here for an hour or two," he said.

"Know any reason why you shouldn't have a drink with me?"

They strolled into an adjoining room, and Horton, who supplied them with a bottle and glasses, came back smiling sardonically. "Now if Hallam hadn't put it that way I mightn't have thought anything," said he. "Still, when a man of his kind takes the trouble to tell one anything it's a blame good reason for not believing him."

In the meanwhile Hallam, who filled the glasses, glanced at Deringham.

"You think I can be of some use to you?" he said.

"Yes," said Deringham. "I presume you know Alton is going up to find the silver he needs to help him traverse your schemes?"

"Oh, yes," said Hallam. "Still I should have figured he could have got it out of Carnaby."

"I believe he intends to."

Hallam smiled unpleasantly. "Now I begin to understand you," he said.

"You lost a good many dollars over the Peveril."

"I think that is beside the question," said Deringham.

Hallam regarded his companion steadily. "Well, I don't know, but we needn't argue. You don't want him to get those dollars out of Carnaby?"

"And you don't want him to find the silver."

Hallam laughed. "That's quite right," said he. "The same thing would suit both of us."

"I scarcely think so," said Deringham. "In my case, I really do not mind whether he gets the dollars from Carnaby or not."

"No?" said Hallam. "Then you'll have to tell me what you want."

"I don't want him to come over to England too soon. If anything kept him up there among the mountains a month or so longer than he expected, so that I should have time to straighten up things a little, I would not complain."

"And," said Hallam, "you would be ready to pay for it?"

Deringham bent his head. "Yes. To a moderate extent."

Hallam sat silent for a time, and then looked up with a glint in his beady eyes. "It could be done. Well, I don't want him to find that silver, and if he doesn't get through his prospecting in the next month or so he'll not find much of anything under six feet of snow, and I'll have fixed things up as I want them before it's melted. Now you're holding pretty heavy in the Aconada mine, and I've been wanting to get my foot in there for a long while."

Deringham stood up, and thrust aside the bottle Hallam passed him.

"Before we go any further I want you to understand that if Alton is held up there until December is over it is all I ask," he said.

Hallam nodded. "Oh, yes," he said. "All I want is so many of those shares transferred to me."

They debated for a while, and then Deringham said, "I would sooner fix it through a third party."

Hallam laughed unpleasantly. "That would suit, but I'd want your cheque to buy them with made out payable to me."

"It would," said Deringham, "not suit me."

"Then we can't make a deal. It's me that's putting this thing through, and if anything goes wrong I'm anxious to have somebody to stand in with me as well as pick up the dollars if it doesn't. I'm talking quite straight. There it is. Take it or leave it."

Deringham was silent again. Then he laughed a little. "Since I cannot apparently do anything else, I'll take it."

Hallam filled up both glasses. "Then that's all," he said. "Here's my respects to the Somasco Consolidated."

Deringham just touched his glass and went out, while Hallam, who sat down and emptied his, smiled ironically. "That man might have kept his dollars, and I'd be quite pleased if Alton stayed up there a good deal more than two months," said he.

Deringham was in the meanwhile hastily writing out telegraphic messages which were to cause a little astonishment on the London stock market, and hamper the working of one or two companies. He would, so far as he could see, be a much poorer man in a few months or so, but he fancied he could gain time to save the reputation that would help him to commence again, and to men of his attainments there are always opportunities. Then he sent off a mounted messenger, and rode slowly back towards Somasco, while Horton spent some time examining a blotting-pad in his back store.

"I'm kind of sorry I can't make anything of that stuff," said he.

"What's the use of wiring any one the names of cities?"

During the next day Alton drew Deringham into his room, and laid a document on the table. "I don't know if that's quite the usual thing, but Horton and I have been worrying over a lawyer's book, and I think it will hold," he said.

Deringham took up the paper, and again there was the little movement at the corners of his eye as he read.