"I'm sorry," said Deringham gravely. "I have, you see, just come from England, where folks are not always so well paid as you seem to be. I think I will look for Mr. Alton. Can you tell me where he is?"

The man, who appeared a trifle mollified, pointed to the bush. "He's yonder, but if he scares you, you needn't blame me," he said.

Deringham picked his way amidst the six-foot fir-stumps girdled with tall fern, over a breadth of white ashes and charcoal where the newly-won land lay waiting for the plough, in and out amidst the chaos of trunks that lay piled athwart each other all round the clearing, and stopped close by three men who were making an onslaught on a majestic tree. Its topmost sprays towered two hundred feet above them, and the great trunk ran a stupendous column to the vault of dusky green above.

It was, however, the men who most attracted Deringham's attention, and he stood for a moment watching them.

Two were poised on narrow boards notched into the tree a man's height from the ground, and one was huge and swarthy, so that the heavy axe he held seemed a toy in his great gnarled hand. The other, whose figure seemed in some respects familiar, stooped a little with the bright axe blade laid flat in one palm as though he were examining it, and Deringham, who could not see his face, turned towards another who sat at the foot of the tree sharpening a big saw. His overalls were in tolerable repair, while from an indefinite something in his face and the way he wore them Deringham set him down as an Englishman. Still, he did not think he was an Alton.

"Can you tell me where Mr. Henry Alton is?" he said. The young man nodded. "Harry!" he said.

Then the man on the plank above turned round, and Deringham felt inclined to gasp as he stood face to face with the new heir to Carnaby.

The man was grimed with dust and ashes. His blue shirt rolled back to the shoulders left uncovered arms that were corded like a smith's, and was rent at the neck so that Deringham could see the finely-arched chest. The overalls, tight-belted round the waist, set off the solidity of his shoulders and the leanness of the flank, while with the first glance at his face Deringham recognized the teamster who had driven them through the bush.

He stood poised on the few inches of springy redwood looking down upon him with a grimly humorous twinkle in his eyes, but through the smears of perspiration and the charcoal grime Deringham now recognized the expression of quiet forcefulness and the directness of gaze which was his birthright.

"Mr. Henry Alton?" he said.

"Yes," said the other quietly.

There was a moment's embarrassing silence, for Alton said nothing further, and Deringham gazed at the man he had journeyed three thousand miles to see.

"I should like a little talk with you," he said presently.

"Can't oblige you," said the other. "I couldn't spare more than a minute now for a railroad director. You can tell me anything you want after supper."

Deringham lost a little of his usual serenity. "My business is of some importance," he said.

Alton smiled grimly. "I can't help that. So is mine," said he. "A lawyer, by the stamp of you. Well, you're trailing the wrong man, because I don't owe anybody money. We'll put you up to-night, and you can look for him to-morrow."

"I have come from Carnaby, England," said Deringham, watching the effect upon the man. "You are, I presume the grandson of its late owner."

This shot got home, but the effect was not altogether what Deringham had anticipated, for Alton's big hands tightened on the axe and his face grew very stern. "I'm not proud of the connection, anyway," he said. "Alton of Somasco is good enough for me."

"But," said Deringham quietly, "I have come to talk things over with you. Tristan Alton left you Carnaby."

Alton straightened himself a little and flung out an arm, while Deringham recognized the Alton pride as with a sweeping gesture he pointed to wide lake, forest-shrouded hillside, and the clearing in the valley.

"He turned out my father because he knew his mind, and now when there is no one else leaves me the played-out property. Thank God, I don't want it, while that's all mine," he said. "What brings you here to talk of Carnaby?"

Deringham smiled a little. "The executor sent me, and I have come a long way," said he. "When I tell you that I am Ralph Deringham you should know me."

Alton nodded gravely. "Then you can tell me all about it after supper, and we'll have plenty time for talking, because you'll stay a while with me," he said. "If you'll go back to the house you'll find some cigars that might please you in the bureau. Sorry I can't come with you, but I'm busy. Are you ready, Tom?"

He turned, and swung up the axe while the big bushman swept his blade aloft, and Deringham watched them curiously. Alton swayed with a steely suppleness from the waist, and the broad wedge of steel flashed about his head before it came down ringing. The man had a few inches of springy wood which bent and heaved beneath him to stand upon, but the great blade descended exactly where the last chip had lain, and when it hissed aloft again that of the silent axeman dropped into the notch it made. Deringham knew a little about a good many things, including sword-play, and he realized as he watched the whirl and flash of blades, precision of effort, and exactitude of time, that this was an example of man's mastery over the trenchant steel.

Presently the man with the saw rose and touched his shoulder. "I fancy we had better draw aside a little," he said. "She will come down in another minute just here."

Now Deringham had seen trees wedged over and drawn down by ropes in England, and wondered a little when the man pointed to the spot where he was standing.

"If you don't resent the question, how do you know?" he said.

The other man laughed a little. "Harry told me, and he's seldom more than a foot out," he said.

There was a groaning of fibres as Deringham drew aside, but the two figures on the springy planks still smote and swung, until simultaneously they flung the axes down and, sprang. Then the great fir quivered a little, toppled, lurched, and fell, and the hillside resounded to the thud it made. It also smote the trembling soil just where the man with the saw had indicated. Then Alton signed to his assistant, and strode away with the axe on his shoulder towards another tree. The saw-sharpener laughed a little as he sat down again.

"Now you have had your say it would be better if you waited until after supper," he said. "You see, one thing at one time is quite enough for Harry, and he really isn't in the least uncivil when you understand him. Still, it's no use trying to make him listen when he doesn't want to."

"That," said Deringham dryly, "was always one of the characteristics of his family. You are presumably an Englishman?"

The other man laughed a little. "Yes," he said, "I'm Charles Seaforth, better known to the boys here as the Honourable Charley, though I have no especial right to the title, and am fortunate in holding a small share in the Somasco ranch, which I owe to my partner's generosity."

"Do I understand that he gave it you?" said Deringham.

Seaforth nodded. "You would be near the mark if you came to that conclusion."

"And is Mr. Alton in the habit of making similar presents?" said Deringham.

Seaforth glanced towards the sinewy figure with the glinting axe, and smiled again. "That," he said quietly, "is one of the most generous men in the Dominion of Canada, but I should not care to be the man who attempted to take advantage of him."

Deringham said nothing further, though he was sensible of a slight uneasiness, and presently went back to the house to rejoin his daughter, while the dusk was creeping across the valley when the men from the sawmill and clearing came home, and Deringham led his daughter out when he heard Alton's voice in the verandah. The latter and his partner were together, and the girl at first felt a slight sense of relief as her glance fell upon Seaforth, who stood with his wide hat in his hand. He was, for that country, somewhat fastidious in dress, his eyes were mildly humorous, and his face was pleasant, while he had not as yet wholly lost the stamp of the graceful idler he had brought with him from England.

"This," said Deringham with the faintest trace of irony, "is our kinsman, Mr. Henry Alton of Carnaby. You have seen him already. My daughter Alice, Mr. Alton!"

The girl stood still a moment, and glanced at Seaforth, whom she could not recollect having seen before, with something that suggested not altogether unpleased surprise in her face. His appearance and attitude disarmed her, but as she was about to speak to him the other man moved so that the fading light fell full upon him. He stood, tall and almost statuesque in his torn overalls, with the misty pines rolling up the hillside behind him, and a big axe in his hand--a type, it seemed to her, of Western barbarity--and a red spot, faint but perceptible, rose into her cheeks as he bent his head. Then she came near forgetting what was due to both of them in her astonishment and anger.

"You!" she said.

"Yes," said the axeman gravely. "Still, your father made a little mistake. I'm Alton of Somasco."

Then he turned and moved forward with a gesture that was almost courtly. "You are very welcome to this poor house of mine," he said.

CHAPTER VI

MISS DERINGHAM MAKES FRIENDS

The Homeric supper was over, and Miss Deringham, who, sitting next to Alton at the head of the long table, had watched the stalwart axeman feed with sensations divided between disgust and wonder, was talking to Seaforth on the verandah, when her father sat by a window of the room his kinsman called his own. There were survey maps, tassels of oats, and a great Wapiti head upon the wall, while Alton himself lay almost full length in a deerhide chair. The window was open wide, and the vista of lake, pine-shrouded hillside, and snow, framed by its log casing, steeped in nocturnal harmonies of silver and blue. Out of the stillness came the scent of balsam, and the sighing of a little breeze amidst the pines.

Deringham held a good cigar, and there was a cup of coffee beside him, while he was not wholly sorry that they sat in darkness. He had realized that Alton of Somasco was by no means a fool, and waited his questions with some anxiety. The rancher, however, had apparently no present intention of asking any.

"So they've been wondering when I am coming over," he said reflectively. "I don't know that I'll come at all." Deringham looked down at his cigar to cover his astonishment. "But you are an Alton of Carnaby," he said.

"Yes," said Alton slowly. "But that is one of the things I want to forget. You see they drove my father out because he had the grit to marry the woman who loved him instead of another one who had the money, but you know all that?"

Deringham nodded, and Alton's face showed grim in the moonlight as he continued: "But what you don't know is how he fought his way uphill in this country, and what my mother suffered helping him. Oh, yes, I can remember her well, gentle, brave, and patient as she was, and know what it must have cost her to camp down alone in the bush, and fight through the hard winter in the ice and snow. Well, she was too good for this world, and she just faded out of it before the good time came. I think they must have a special place for women of her kind in the other one."