Seaforth bent his head. "He has so little now. Hallam has beaten us all round, and Harry's face takes my sleep away. Everything he hoped for has been taken from him, and he is lame, you see."

Nellie Townshead glanced at him swiftly. "One would scarcely notice it. You have something in your mind, Charley."

Seaforth's face was troubled as he answered her. "It is a little difficult to put into words, and if it was anybody else than Harry I would not try. Still, Alice Deringham is almost as much to him as you are to me--and I don't think she knows the truth, you see."

Nellie Townshead flushed a little, and there was a trace of anger in her eyes. "If Miss Deringham is punished for her wicked pride what is that to you?"

"Nothing," said Seaforth quietly. "Still--because of what I saw at the ranch--I am sorry for her, and Harry, who has been a very good friend to me, is being punished too. We have so much, you and I, and he has nothing now."

The girl did not answer him for at least a minute, and appeared concerned about something that rattled in the bicycle. Then she stopped and looked up at the man with a great tenderness in her eyes.

"You want to tell her? Well, it will be very difficult, but I will do it for you."

Seaforth stooped and kissed the little ungloved hand on the bicycle reverentially. "I don't know how I asked you, and knowing how much has been given me I am almost afraid," he said.

Nellie Townshead smiled at him, but she said nothing further until they parted, and Seaforth turned back towards Vancouver city. He was brimming over with good-will to everybody when he reached it, and as it happened found storekeeper Horton, who came down there occasionally, waiting for him. Horton was by no means a genius or well versed in legal procedure, but he had a ready wit, and Seaforth felt prompted to tell him the story of their first disastrous march, which Alton had hitherto but partially narrated, though he suppressed its final incident. Horton listened gravely with his most magisterial air.

"Harry's no fool, but he don't know everything," he said. "Now I see where you and me can take a hand in."

"Yes?" said Seaforth thoughtfully.

Horton nodded. "It was Damer who recorded your claim."

"Damer?" said Seaforth. "That was the man Harry pitched into the river at Somasco."

Horton chuckled. "You're right. Harry's just a trifle too handy at slinging folks into rivers and down stairways. Well, the fellow was hanging round my store, and I thought I knew him and wasn't sure, but when I saw his name down on the Crown mining record that fixed me. Now you're quite ready, you and Tom, to swear to the story you told me?"

"Of course, but still I don't see----"

Horton's eyes twinkled. "You will presently. That's where being a magistrate comes in. I'm going to take hold of Damer for horse-stealing."

A thought came swiftly into Seaforth's mind, and he smote the table.

"But I can't swear it was Damer. You would never convict him."

Horton laughed the bushman's almost silent laugh. "I don't know that I want to. Anyway, I can keep on remanding him, and when I sent him up for trial it would be a rancher's jury. That's going to give us a pull on Mr. Hallam, who is standing in somewhere behind the whole thing--and I kind of fancy there's another man with him."

Seaforth's face grew grave. "Then, as Harry wouldn't like it and there's nothing in it, I'd get rid of that fancy. Now, of course, you know what you can do, but isn't it playing a little too much into your own hand? And you see folks might get talking about the thing."

Horton put on his most impressive air. "There's justice by statute, and there's equity, as well as a lot more you never heard about," said he.

Seaforth could not check his smile. "And which of them is what we're going to do?"

"This," said Horton solemnly, "is--all of them. It's the square thing.

Is there any reason why a man shouldn't do what is right because it suits him? Anyway, it needn't worry you, because you can just sit up and watch the circus begin."

"Just one question. Was Damer the man who rode out for the railroad one snowy night, shortly before I started after Harry?"

Horton nodded, and wondered a little at the change in his companion, for there was a little flash in Seaforth's eyes and his voice had a ring. "Then," he said grimly, "I'm going to take a hand in, but there are several good reasons why we should not tell Harry."

It was a week later when Forel came home one night looking somewhat anxious and depressed. He said little during the evening meal, but after it spoke to his wife alone, and Mrs. Forel came upon Alice Deringham soon after she left him.

"I'm not going to get the new ponies after all," she said. "Poor Tom has been unfortunate again."

"I am sorry," said Alice Deringham. "You mean in the city?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Forel with a little sigh. "He is always a trifle sanguine, and he put a good many dollars into a venture Mr. Alton recommended. Tom expected a good deal from it--but the dollars have all gone."

Alice Deringham did not look at the speaker. "They have lost the money?"

"Well," said Mrs. Forel, "I believe they will do. I don't understand all of it, but Tom tells me that he can't see any hope for Alton unless a new railroad's built, or the Government does something for the Somasco country, and that does not seem likely."

"Please tell me all you know."

Mrs. Forel looked thoughtful. "It isn't a great deal. The land and ranches up at Somasco are not worth very much just now, but Alton persuaded Tom they would be presently, and he helped Alton to borrow more dollars from everybody who would lend them. Then they built mills and things which will not be much use to anybody unless a railroad comes in. The people would only lend him the money for a little while, and Alton had hoped to pay them out of a silver mine, but Hallam, it seems, has been working against him and got somebody to relocate the mine because Alton did not get there in time. Now unless Alton and his company can pay those dollars back the other people will take all he has away from him, and if the railroad is ever built it is they or Hallam, who has been trying to buy the mortgages from them, who will benefit."

"But," said Alice Deringham, "how was it that Mr. Alton did not make sure of the mine?"

"That is just what puzzles Tom. He stayed down here too long, and then there was a flood or something that delayed him. Still, if he had gone when he intended he would have been in time."

Mrs. Forel glanced at her companion curiously, but the girl sat very still with her face turned aside. It was almost a minute before she spoke again.

"And Mr. Alton takes it hardly?"

"Tom doesn't seem to know. Alton, he thinks, must be beaten, but he told him he meant holding on until the last dollar had gone. After all, I can't help feeling sorry for him. It must be hard to get oneself crippled and then lose everything, while Tom declares there was nothing in that other affair about the girl."

Alice Deringham said nothing, but Mrs. Forel saw the blood creep into the polished whiteness of her neck, and wished that she would look up.

The girl's rigid stillness was, she fancied, a trifle unnatural, and suggested that there was a good deal behind it.

"Well," she said presently, "that is all I know, and I think Tom is waiting for me."

Mrs. Forel went away, and Alice Deringham sat where she had left her, white in face now, with something that was not wholly unlike horror in her eyes.

"And," she said, "I kept him."

Half an hour passed, and she did not move. Anger against her father and horror of herself were held in check as yet by a tense anxiety as to the end of the struggle she had plunged the man who loved her in.

She could picture him standing with his grave quietness face to face with ruin, and holding on until the last faint hope had gone. Still, it seemed almost impossible that he should be beaten, and the curious confidence she had had in him reasserted itself and crept as a ray of brightness into the darkness of her humiliation. That might be borne or grappled with afterwards if Alton came out triumphant, but in the meanwhile she dare not think of herself or what she had done.

Presently there was a tapping at the door, and a maid came in.

"There's a lady--Miss Townshead--waiting to see you, miss," she said.

Now Alice Deringham was the reverse of a timid woman, but for a few moments she felt her courage fail. Every instinct in her shrank from that meeting, but the maid had no cause to suspect it when she rose languidly and followed her. The interview was not of long duration, and nobody ever heard all that passed between the two, but when Seaforth, who had been waiting anxiously, handed Miss Townshead into the cars her eyes were misty.

"Was it very hard?" he said.

"No," the girl said slowly; "not after the beginning. I was angry when I went in, and I came away only sorry for her. There is a great deal more that is lovable in Miss Deringham than I ever fancied there could be."

"Yes," said Seaforth sapiently. "But it's much better when there's nothing else, which is the case with somebody I know. I like my gold free from alloy."

It was the next day when Deringham found his daughter alone in the sunny corner of the verandah. He carried a handful of papers, and the girl noticed that while he looked ill and haggard there was relief in his face. It was, however, with a vacant curiosity she waited for him to speak, for she had risen heavy-eyed and listless after a sleepless night. Deringham leaned against the balustrade in front of her, and appeared to find it somewhat difficult to begin.