Alton of Somasco. Harold Bindloss
heavily encumbered," said Deringham, almost too eagerly.
Alton nodded, "Still, it must be worth a little, and would give the folks who lived there a standing in the old country?"
"Yes," said Deringham thoughtfully, and was once more astonished by his companion's answer.
"Well," he said slowly. "I was thinking about your daughter. All this, it seems to me, is mighty rough on her. It would hurt her to be turned out of Carnaby?"
"Isn't that beside the question?" said Deringham with a trace of stiffness.
Alton took up another cigar and lighted it. "I don't quite know that it is," he said. "You see, I remember a good deal what my mother had to put up with, and it has made me kind of sorry for women who have to do without the things they have been used to. Now Miss Deringham has had a pretty good time in the old country?"
Deringham moved his head very slightly. "I scarcely think we need go into that, but it is incontrovertible that the loss of Carnaby would make a difference to her," he said.
Alton sat silent a space, and then while Deringham wondered, smiled a little. "And she might have kept it but for a very little thing that happened a month or two ago," he said. "If the juniper-twigs had broken it would have saved considerable trouble to everybody. I was back there in the mountains looking for a silver lead, you see."
"Silver mines are, I understand, not always profitable to the man who finds them, and I should have fancied you had already sufficient scope for your energies," said Deringham dryly.
Alton laughed, but there was a trace of grimness in his voice. "If I once get my stakes in on the lead this one's going to be, and if I could get the dollars I could do a good deal for Somasco," he said. "We want roads and mills, the biggest orchard in the province, and a fruit cannery, and we're going to have them presently. That's why I wanted the silver."
"You did not find it then?" said Deringham, who was not unwilling to follow his companion from the former topic.
"No," said Alton, "not that time, but I will by and by. Well, there was a good deal of snow up in the ranges, and my feet got away from me one evening when we were crawling along the edge of a gully. There was a river and big boulders some five hundred feet below, and I slipped down, clawing at the snow, until I grabbed a little bunch of juniper just on the edge. Part of it tore up, but I got a grip of a better handful, and hung on to it, with most of me swinging over the gully. Charley was stripping off the pack-rope on the slope above, and he was mighty quick, but I knew that bush was coming away with me, and didn't think he could be fast enough. I didn't feel exactly happy, but while I've read that folks think of some astonishing things when they're starting out on the long trail, it wasn't that way with me. I could only remember there was a man I'd never got even with who'd badly cheated me."
[Illustration: "There was a river and big boulders some five hundred feet below."]
Deringham felt a little shiver run through him, for there was a grim vindictiveness in the speaker's tone, and he felt that Alton of Somasco would not lightly forgive an injury.
"You managed to crawl up?" he said.
"No," said Alton simply, "I didn't. I lay there watching Charley, and felt the bush drawing out, until the rope came down and Charley hauled me up. It would have made a big difference to Miss Deringham if he'd been a second or two longer. Well, we'll have lots of time for talking, because you're out for your health, and we'll keep you right here until we see what Somasco can do for you, and just now I see Miss Deringham alone on the verandah."
He rose, and left Deringham sitting by the window. The moon had swung higher now, and the lake was a blaze of silver, but Deringham scarcely noticed it or the ethereal line of snow. In place of it he saw a shadowy figure hanging between earth and heaven with tense fingers gripping a little bush, while a river frothed down the black hollow five hundred feet below, and remembered that even in that moment the man who hung there regretted he could not repay somebody who had cheated him. Then he rose and moved once or twice up and down the room, his fancy still dwelling upon the picture. If the juniper-twigs had yielded it would have made a great difference to him as well as his daughter. He sat down again presently and stared at the valley, seeing nothing as he remembered that Alton of Somasco might go back to the ranges again, and then with an effort shook the fancies from him. They were not wholesome for a man hemmed in by difficulties as he was then.
In the meanwhile his daughter stood with one hand on the verandah balustrade, listening to the song of the river which came sonorously through the shadows of the bush. She also breathed in the scent of the firs, and found it pleasant, but it was instinctively she did so, for her thoughts were also busy. Alice Deringham had noticed her father's fits of abstraction as well as the anxiety in his face, and had no great difficulty in connecting them with the loss of Carnaby. She was also fond of him, for Deringham had shown only his better side to her, and sensible of a very bitter feeling towards the man who had supplanted him. In addition to this, she remembered the faint amusement in his eyes when he noticed the glint of a silver coin she held half-covered in her hand, and her pulses throbbed a little faster. The man had placed her in a ridiculous position, and had he guessed her feelings towards him he would probably not have made his appearance as he did just then.
The boards creaked behind her, and turning partly round she straightened herself with a slow sinuous gracefulness, and stood drawn up to her full height looking at the newcomer. He stood still a moment with veiled admiration in his eyes, and this was not altogether surprising in one who had dwelt for the most part far remote from civilization in the lonely bush. Alice Deringham had been considered somewhat of a beauty in London, and it was possible that she knew the pale moonlight and the harmonies of blue and silver she stood out against enhanced the symmetry of her outline. The man stood watching her with his head bent a trifle, but Miss Deringham evinced a fine indifference. She had formed a somewhat mistaken estimate of him already.
"I want to tell you that I'm sorry," he said.
The girl fancied she understood him, and it increased her anger, for the fact that this barbarian of the bush should venture to express pity for her was galling. Still, she had no intention of admitting it, and regarded him inquiringly with a half-contemptuous indifference which she had found especially effective with presumptuous young men in England. Somewhat to her astonishment it apparently had no result at all, for Alton returned her gaze gravely and without embarrassment.
"I don't understand," she said.
"I was hoping you would, because I felt I must tell you, and I'm not good at talking," said the man. "I can't help seeing that you are vexed with me."
If Alton had intended to be conciliatory he had signally failed, because Miss Deringham had no intention of admitting that anything he could do would cause her anger.
"I am afraid you are taking things for granted," she said.
Alton smiled gravely, and the girl noticed that he accepted the onus of the explanation she had forced upon him.
"I really don't think you should be," he said. "I can't help being Tristan Alton's grandson, you see, and we are some kind of relations and ought to be friendly."
Miss Deringham laughed a little. "Relations do not always love each other very much," said she.
"No," said Alton. "Still, I think they should, and, even if it hurts, I feel I've got to tell you I'm sorry. If you would only take it, it would please me to give you back Carnaby."
The girl almost gasped with astonishment and indignation. "That is a trifle unnecessary, since you know it is perfectly impossible," she said.
She had at last roused the man, for the moonlight showed a darker colour creeping into his tan. "I don't usually say more than I mean," he said. "Now we shall never understand each other unless you will talk quite straight with me."
Alice Deringham had not lost her discretion in her anger, and, since there was no avoiding the issue, decided it would be preferable to blame him for the lesser of his offences.
"Then," she said coldly, "it was somewhat