"Carnaby Grange?" said Alton quietly.

"Yes," said the girl with a trace of curiosity. "We spent some little time in the grounds. They lie deep in the woods, and there is a famous rose garden."

"Yes," said Alton. "All kinds of roses. And the old place? Tell me about it!"

"Is very picturesque," said the girl. "It looked quiet and grey, and almost stately under its ivy that autumn day, but I could scarcely describe it you. You have nothing like it in Canada."

"No," said Alton gravely. "I have seen nothing like it in Canada. But wasn't there a lake?"

The girl glanced at him curiously. "There was," she said. "I remember it lay shining before us between the woods. It was very beautiful, quieter and calmer than our lakes in Canada."

A slight flush crept through the bronze in Alton's face, which grew a trifle grim, and a light into his eyes. "There is a lake at Somasco where you can see the white peaks lie shining, and the big Wapiti come down to drink," he said. "There are cedars and redwoods about it which except for a few in California, haven't their equal in the world, but there's nothing about that lake or valley that's quiet or calm. It's wild and great and grand. No. They've nothing of that kind in the old country. Are not Abana and Pharfar better than all the waters of Israel?"

"Apposite!" said Townshead. "You apparently read the Scriptures?"

"Sometimes," said Alton simply. "They get hold of me. Those old fellows went right down to the bed rock of human nature back there in Palestine, and it strikes me there's no great difference in that between now and then."

"When," said Townshead smiling, "I was a King in Babylon."

"No," said Alton reflectively. "You're a little late on time. The Christian slave don't quite fit in."

Townshead glanced at him sharply, and said nothing, for the rancher had once or twice already somewhat astonished him.

"Well," said Alton, "tell me, Miss Nellie, were the lilies where the ashes hung over the lake? I want to know all about Carnaby."

The girl seemed somewhat thoughtful, and a trifle astonished, but she made the best use of her memory, and Alton listened gravely. "Yes," he said. "I seem to see it. The rose garden on the south side, the big lawn, and the lake. There's a little stream on the opposite side of it that comes down through the fern from the big beech wood."

"But," said the girl, "how could you know that?"

"I think I must have dreamt it," said Alton gravely. "Or perhaps my father told me. He used to talk of Carnaby, and I feel I know it well."

The girl stared at him in her wonder. "But what is Carnaby to you?"

she said.

Alton rose up, and stood still a moment, somewhat grim in face. "It should have been my father's, and now when I don't know that I want it, I think it's mine," he said. "Anyway, I'm kind of tired, and I think I'll turn in. Excuse me."

He went out, and Nellie Townshead glanced at his comrade. "Do you know what he means?" she said.

Seaforth smiled and shook his head. "I've never seen Harry taken that way before," he said. "Still, we'll hope he'll be better to-morrow.

He has been through a good deal to-day."

Miss Townshead did not appear contented, but she changed the topic.

"Then what did you mean when you spoke about the dress packet?"

"I'll tell you," said Seaforth, "if you don't tell Harry. Well, when the packet slipped down to the edge of the big drop I'm not sure that the price of two ranches would have induced most men to follow it."

"But why did Mr. Alton go?" said the girl, with an expression which was not quite the one the man had expected to see in her face.

Seaforth smiled. "He may have fancied you wanted it. Anyway, Harry is a little obstinate occasionally, and when a thing looks difficult he can't resist attempting it. In the language of my adopted country that's the kind of man he is. Now I think I had better go after him, because I fancy he wants soothing after that last speech of his."

CHAPTER III

HARRY THE TEAMSTER

The sun was on the hill slopes, and there was a dazzling glare of snow, when Miss Alice Deringham stood with her travelling dress fluttering about her on the platform of the observation car as the Pacific express went thundering down a valley of British Columbia. The dress, which was somewhat dusty, had cost her father a good deal of money, and the hat that was sprinkled with cinders had come from Paris; while the artistic simplicity of both had excited the envy of the two Winnipeg ladies who, having failed to make friends with Miss Deringham during the journey, now sat watching her disapprovingly in a corner of the car. The girl was of a type as yet not common in Western Canada, reserved, quietly imperious, and annoyingly free from any manifestation of enthusiasm. She had also listened languidly to their most racy stories with a somewhat tired look in her eyes.

They were, however, fine eyes of a violet blue, and gold hair with a warmer tinge in it clustered about the broad white forehead, while the rest of the girl's face was refined in its modelling, if a trifle cold in expression and colouring. Miss Deringham was also tall, and as she stood with one little hand on the rail and the other on the brim of the hat the wind would have torn away from her, her pose displayed a daintily-proportioned figure. The girl was, however, as oblivious of her companions as she was of the dust, and her eyes were at last keen with wonder. She had seen nothing which resembled the panorama that unrolled itself before her as the great mountain locomotives sped on through the primeval wilderness, and the wild beauty of it left a deeper mark on her because her Canadian journey had been more or less a disappointment.

Alice Deringham had tasted of the best that England had to offer in the shape of sport and scenery, art and music, and had grown a little tired of it all; while, when her father had announced his intention of crossing the Canadian Dominion, partly on an affair of business and partly for the benefit of his health, she had gladly accompanied him in the hope of seeing something new. Deringham was a promoter and director of English companies, but his daughter having the fine disdain for anything connected with finance which occasionally characterizes those who have never felt the lack of money, asked him a few questions concerning one object of his journey. She only knew that the Carnaby estate, which would in the usual course have reverted to her, had been unexpectedly willed to the son of a man its late owner had disinherited, on conditions. The man, it appeared, was dead, and Deringham desired to see whether any understanding or compromise could be arrived at with the one son he had left behind in Western Canada.

To become the mistress of Carnaby Hall would have pleased Alice Deringham, but, as she had already realized there was no great hope of that, she had prepared to enjoy her Canadian journey. It had, however, fallen short of her expectations. Ontario reminded her of southern Scotland, and there was nothing to impress one who had seen the Highlands when the cars ran into the confusion of rock and forest, lake and river, along the Superior shore. Winnipeg in no way appealed to her, and she grew weary as they swept out past straggling wooden towns into the grass lands of the West.

The towns rose stark from the prairie in unsoftened ugliness, and there was nothing to stir the imagination in the great waste of sun-bleached grass. Day by day, while the dust whirled by them, and the gaunt telegraph posts came up out of the far horizon and sank into the east, they raced across the wide levels. The red dawns burned behind them, the sunsets flamed ahead, and still there was only dust and grass, chequered here and there with bands of stubble, while driving grit and ugliness were the salient features of the little stations they stopped at.

Miss Deringham had read enough to learn that pistol and bandolier had long gone out of fashion in Western Canada, where, indeed, they had rarely formed a necessary portion of the plainsman's attire, but she had expected a little vivid colour and dash of romance. The stock-riders she saw at the station were, however, for the most part dress in faded jean, and many of them appeared to speak excellent English, while the wheat-growers rode soberly in dusty and dilapidated wagons. Still the romance was there, though in place of the swashbuckling cavalier she found only quiet, slowly-spoken men, with patience most plainly stamped upon their sun-darkened faces. Their hands were hard with the grip of the bridle and plough-stilt in place of the rifle, and the struggle they waged was a slow and grim one against frost and drought and adverse seasons.

There was, however, a transformation when she awoke one morning and found the Rockies had been left behind, and they were roaring down through the passes of British Columbia. This was a new, and apparently unfinished, world, a land of tremendous mountains, leagues of forests, such as her imagination had never pictured, and untrodden heights of never-melting snow. Glacier, blue lake, river droning through shadowy canons, rushed by, and the glamour of it crept into the heart of the girl, until as they swept down into the valley with a river two thousand feet below, she felt she was at last in touch with something strange and new.

Presently the hoot of the whistle came ringing up the pass, wheels screamed discordantly, and the pines below flitted towards them a trifle more slowly. Then, as they swung rocking round the face of a crag and a cluster of wooden buildings rose to view, Deringham came out upon the platform. He was a tall, slightly-built man, with a pallid face and keen but slightly shifty eyes, and bore the unmistakable stamp of the Englishman.

"That must be our alighting-place, and I am not sure how we are to get on," he said. "It is, I understand, a long way to Somasco, and when we get there I really do not know whether we shall find any accommodation suitable for you. It might have been better if you had gone on to our friends, the Fords, at Vancouver."

Alice Deringham laughed a little. "I don't think you need worry. Mr.

Alton will, no doubt, take us in," she said. "A little primitive barbarity would not be unpleasant as a novelty."

A trace of something very like anger crept into Deringham's eyes. It was not very perceptible, for he seldom showed much of what he felt, but his daughter noticed it. "It is somewhat unfortunate that we shall probably have to avail ourselves of the young man's hospitality," he said. "You understand, my dear, that he is a kinsman of your own, and, unless he can be persuaded to relinquish his claim, the owner of Carnaby. Still, I have hopes of coming to terms with him. The charges upon the land are very burdensome."

Alice Deringham's face grew a trifle scornful. "You will do your best," she said. "The thought of one of these half-civilized axemen living at Carnaby is almost distressful to me. In fact, I feel a curious dislike to the man even before I have seen him."

There was another hoot of the whistle, a little station grew larger down the track, and here and there a wooden house peeped out amidst the slowly-flitting trees. Then the cars stopped with a jerk, and Miss Deringham stepped down from the platform. Her first glance showed her long ranks of climbing pines, with a great white peak silhouetted hard and sharp above them against the blue. Then she became conscious of the silver mist streaming ethereally athwart the sombre verdure from the river hollow, and that a new and pungent smell cut through the odours of dust and creosote which reeked along the track. It came from a cord of cedar-wood piled up close by, and she found it curiously refreshing. The drowsy roar of the river mingled with the panting of the locomotive pump, but there was a singular absence of life and movement in the station until the door of the baggage-car slid open, and her father sprang aside as her trunks were shot out on to the platform. A bag or two of something followed them, the great engines panted, and the dusty cars went on again, while it dawned upon Alice Deringham that her last hold upon civilization had gone, and she was left to her own resources in a new and somewhat barbarous land.

There were no obsequious porters to collect her baggage, which lay where it had alighted with one trunk gaping open, while a couple of men in blue shirts and soil-stained jeans leaned upon the neighbouring fence watching her with mild curiosity. Her father addressed another one somewhat differently attired who stood in the door of the office.

"There is a hotel here, but they couldn't take you in," said the man.

"Party of timber-right prospectors came along, and they're kind of frolicsome. They might find you a berth on the verandah, but I don't know that it would suit the lady. It mixes things up considerable when you bring a woman."

Deringham glanced at his daughter, and the girl laughed. "Then is there any means of getting on to Cedar Valley?" she said.

The man slowly shook his head. "You might walk, but it's close on forty miles," he said. "Stage goes out on Saturday."

Deringham made a gesture of resignation. "I never walked forty miles at once in my life," he said. "Can you suggest anything at all? We cannot well live here on the platform until Saturday."

"No," said the man gravely. "I don't figure I could let you. Well, now I wonder if Harry could find room for you."

He shouted, and a man who was carrying a flour-bag turned his head and then went on again until he hove his load into a two-horse wagon, while Miss Deringham noticed that although the bag was stamped 140 lbs. the man trotted lightly across the metals and ballast with it upon his shoulders. Then he came in their direction, and she glanced at him with some curiosity as he stood a trifle breathless before them. He wore a blue shirt burst open at the neck which showed his full red throat, and somewhat ragged overalls. The brown hair beneath his broad felt hat was whitened with flour, and his bronzed face was red with the dust. Still he stood very straight, and it was a good face, with broad forehead and long, straight nose, while the effect of the solid jaw was mitigated by something in the shape of the mobile lips. The grey eyes were keen and steady until a sympathetic twinkle crept into them, and Miss Deringham felt that the man understood her position.