"Regret to inform you that my partner met with accident in the ranges, and his condition is critical," it read. "Can you send us nurse or capable woman? Mrs. Margery ill. Seaforth, Somasco."

Alice Deringham shivered a little. "He is evidently dangerously injured."

"It appears so," said Deringham, and his daughter afterwards remembered that his voice was hoarse and strained.

The girl, however, said nothing for a while. She was not impulsive, and her face remained almost as cold in its clear whiteness as the panelling behind it, but her heart beat a little faster than usual, and she was trying somewhat unsuccessfully to analyze her sensations. In the meanwhile the voices of the men who now surrounded the one with the paper reached her, and she noticed vacantly that her father seemed to be listening to them.

"They'll hang him, anyway," said one.

"Made no show at all when they got him hiding in the bush," said another. "Still, you couldn't expect much from that kind of man.

Killed him for a hundred dollars in his bed."

"Yes, sir," said the first speaker. "And he didn't get all of them.

The man was his own cousin, and too sick to do anything. Well, thank God, we haven't got many vermin of that kind in the Dominion."

Deringham, who had picked up the telegram, let it slip from his fingers as he rose, and the girl wondered at the change in him. He seemed to have grown suddenly haggard, and the lines upon his face were much more apparent than usual.

"You will excuse me a minute," he said, and the girl noticed the curious deliberation of his movements and the stoop in his shoulders as he crossed the saloon.

Deringham had faced more than one crisis in the past, and the difference in his pose might not have attracted a stranger's notice, though it was evident to his daughter that something had troubled him.

Why he should be so disturbed by the news of Alton's condition she could not quite see, but that appeared of the less importance, because she was endeavouring to evade the question why the telegram should also have caused her a curious consternation. He was a half-taught rancher, and she had been accustomed to the homage of men of mark and polish in England--but it was with something approaching dismay she heard that the man who had supplanted her father was, though she could scarcely contemplate the possibility, dying.

In the meanwhile Deringham walked into the bar, and leaned somewhat heavily upon the counter as he asked for a glass of brandy. He spilled a little of it, and the steward, who saw that his fingers shook, glanced at him curiously as he set it down.

"I guess that will fix you, sir," he said. "You're not feeling well?"

Deringham made a little gesture of assent, and the man drew him out a chair. "That is good brandy," he said. "You'd better sit down there quietly and have another. Here's _The Colonist_. They've got that fellow up at Slocane, but one feels sorry the boys didn't get hold of him. Hanging's not much use for that kind of man."

Deringham's fingers trembled as he thrust the journal aside, but his voice was even. "The brandy is rather better than any I've had of late," he said. "You can give me another glass of it."

For at least ten minutes he lay somewhat limply in the chair, and his reflections were not pleasant. He had speculated with another man's money and lost most of it, as well as profited by several transactions which were little better than a swindle; but that was as far as he had gone hitherto, and he had in a curious fashion, retained through it all a measure of inherited pride. Now, however, the disguise was for a moment torn aside, and he saw himself as he was, a thief and a miscreant, no better than the brutish bushman who had slain his sick kinsman for a hundred dollars. There was, as he had read already, nothing to redeem the sordid, cowardly treachery of that crime.

Deringham was, however, proficient at finding excuses for himself and shutting his eyes to unpleasant facts, and the phase commenced to pass.

He had, he recollected, plainly stated that he merely desired Alton to be detained a little amidst the ranges, and it became evident to him that what had happened was the result of Hallam's villainy. Hallam had injured him as well as Alton, while there was no controverting the fact that the rancher's decease would relieve him of a vast anxiety, and his first indignation against Hallam also melted when he rose composedly from the chair. He felt that Seaforth expected something of him, and it appeared advisable to consider what could be done, while a project already commended itself to him. In another five minutes he had rejoined his daughter, looking more like the man who urbanely presided over the not always contented shareholders' meetings. He realized, however, that he had a slightly difficult task before him.

"You seem to take the news rather badly, father," said the girl.

Deringham smiled deprecatingly. "I have not been quite so well lately, and it upset me a trifle," said he. "I have a regard for our Canadian kinsman and have been inclined to fancy that you shared it with me."

"Of course," said the girl indifferently. "Mr. Alton has been especially kind to us."

"Yes," said Deringham. "Mr. Seaforth must also be very helpless up there alone, with his comrade seriously ill. Now there is no great necessity for my journey down the Sound, and I have no doubt that the business could be handled almost as well by letter. I do not know that there is very much that would please you to be seen in the Washington townships either."

Alice Deringham glanced at him thoughtfully. "And?" she said.

Deringham glanced down a moment at his shoes. "I was wondering if you could be of any use up there."

His daughter laughed a little. "I think that is readily answered. I cannot cook, and neither can I wash, while I have never attended to a sick person in my life."

"No," said her father with a trace of embarrassment. "Still, one understands that it comes naturally to women. In any case your mere presence would in a fashion be an advantage."

Alice Deringham watched him in silence for a few seconds and then smiled again. "It is somewhat difficult to believe it. I am sincerely sorry for Mr. Alton, but I can see no reason for intruding at Somasco now."

Deringham regarded her steadily, and the girl knew it would be advisable for her to yield. This did not displease her, for, though she had negatived his suggestion, her father's wishes coincided with her own. She, however, desired to visit Somasco as it were under compulsion, and to feel that she had not done so of her own inclination.

"I think there is a reason--and it would please me," he said.

"Then I should be pleased to hear it."

Deringham appeared to consider, because the motives which influenced him were ones he could not well reveal. "We are his only relatives in this country--and there is the look of the thing," he said.

The girl moved a little, and her father watching her noticed her fine symmetry, and how her red-gold hair gleamed against the white panelling. It was possibly because of this background he also noticed the faint flicker of warmth that crept into her face and neck, and that there was a glow in her eyes he had not seen there previously.

"That," she said with a cold distinctness, "is precisely what I object to."

Deringham laughed a little. "I think that aspect of the question will not be evident to Alton."

"No?" said the girl, while the tinge of colour deepened a little.

"Still, it is very plain to me."

Deringham said nothing, and the two sat still while the voice of the man dictating jarred upon one of them. "Very little interest taken in mineral claims, no inquiries for ranching properties."

Alice Deringham turned, and saw the girl's fingers flittering across the paper, but her face was still hidden and the monotonous voice continued, "We made a few advances during the last week or two."

The other passengers had gone out of the saloon, and it was very quiet save for the soft flow of words and rattle of the pencil, when Deringham once more unfolded the telegram.

"I am afraid it is going hardly with the man," he said suggestively.

"'My partner met with accident--his condition is critical.' The message left Somasco yesterday."

There was a rustle at the adjoining table, and the girl's pencil fell to the floor.

"Will you wait a moment, please?" a voice said, and the dictation broke off abruptly, while when the girl rose Alice Deringham found herself suddenly confronted with Miss Townshead. Deringham, who stood up, made her a little decorous inclination.

"I am pleased to see you again," he said.

The speech was apparently lost upon the girl, who did not seem to notice his daughter's greeting.

"I could not avoid hearing a few words of yours," she said. "Mr.

Alton--or his partner--is seriously ill."

Deringham handed her the telegram, and stood watching her curiously while she read it. He saw her lips set a trifle, and a slight lowering of her eyes, but though the girl seemed to draw in her breath he fancied it was not with consternation.

"That is all we know," he said.

Miss Townshead gave him back the message, but Deringham did not see her face, for she and his daughter seemed to be looking at each other.

They formed a somewhat curious contrast, for Alice Deringham appeared taller and more stately than she was in her costly furs, and Nellie Townshead very slight and almost shabby in her thin and well-worn dress. Neither spoke for a moment, but the half-amiable condescension in Miss Deringham's attitude was a trifle too marked.

"I am afraid that is all we can tell you," she said. "Mr. Alton has evidently met with a serious accident, and we are going up at once to Somasco to see what we can do for him."