It was evident that he was endeavoring to find cause for contentment with the life before him, but Ida fancied that he wished to avoid the question she had raised.

"You forget to mention the raw hands and the galled shoulders, as well as the snow-slush and the rain. However, that's not quite the point. As I said, all that leads to nothing. Are you too proud to take a trifling favor because it comes through me?"

Weston met her gaze, and there was a grave forcefulness in his manner which almost astonished her. He evidently for once had suffered his usual self-restraint to relax, and she felt it was almost a pity that he had not done so more frequently.

"Miss Stirling," he said, "you are, as it happens, one of the few people from whom I could not take a favor of that kind."

She understood him, and for a moment a flicker of color crept into her cheek. It was, she felt, a clean pride that had impelled him to the speech. There were, she admitted, no benefits within her command that she would not gladly have thrust upon him; but, for all that, she would not have had him quietly acquiesce in them. Perhaps she was singular in this, but her forebears had laid the foundations of a new land's future with ax and drill, clearing forest and breaking prairie with stubborn valor and toil incredible. They had flung their wagon roads over thundering rivers and grappled with stubborn rock, and among them the soft-handed man who sought advancement through a woman's favor was, as a rule, regarded with quiet scorn. She said nothing, however, and it was a few moments before Weston looked at her again.

"Anyway," he said, "I couldn't do what you suggest. I am going back into the ranges with Grenfell to look for the mine."

"Ah," said Ida, "you haven't given up that notion yet?"

The man smiled grimly.

"I am keener about it than ever. Perhaps it's somewhat curious, but I seem certain that we shall strike that quartz lead one of these days."

Ida was glad to let the conversation take this new turn, for she understood his eagerness now, and she had felt that they were skirting a crisis each time she had talked with him of late. She had the courage to make a sacrifice, and, indeed, had the occasion arisen, would probably have considered none too costly; but it seemed due to him as well as to her that he should at least make some strenuous effort to pull down the barriers between them.

"Well," she said quietly, "it is very curious that you discovered no trace of it. You said you found Grenfell's partner lying dead upon the range, and, as their provisions were running out when he left the lake, he could not have gone very far. Was it a big lake?"

"It couldn't have been. Grenfell said he walked round it in a couple of hours."

Ida looked thoughtful.

"Still, when you had the spot where you came upon Verneille to work from, you should have seen it from one of the spurs of the range."

"Yes," admitted Weston, "that seems reasonably evident, though we certainly saw no sign of it." He broke off and laughed. "The whole thing sounds crazy, doesn't it? Still, as I said, I believe we are going to be successful."

He turned away and busied himself with some of the gear; and neither of them said anything further until they ran into the bay before the house. Three or four days later Weston conveyed the party down the lake to the carriage that was waiting to take them to the station; and Ida laid her hand in his for only a moment before she drove away.



CHAPTER XVII

SCARTHWAITE-IN-THE-FOREST

Ida Stirling had spent some time in England when, one autumn evening, she descended the wide oak staircase of Scarthwaite Hall at Scarthwaite-in-the-Forest. There was no forest in the vicinity, though long ago a certain militant bishop had held by kingly favor the right of venery over the surrounding moors, and now odd wisps of straggling firs wound up the hollows that seamed them here and there. Nobody seemed to know who first built Scarthwaite Hall, though many a dalesman had patched it afterward and pulled portions of it down. It was one of the ancient houses, half farm and half stronghold, which may still be found in the north country. They were, until a few decades ago, usually in possession of the Statesmen who worked their own land. The Statesmen have gone—economic changes vanquished them—but the houses they inherited from the men who bore pike and bow at Bannockburn and Flodden are for the most part standing yet. They have made no great mark in history, but their stout walls have time and again been engirdled by Scottish spears, and after such occasions there was not infrequently lamentation by Esk and Liddell.

It was clear that Scarthwaite Hall had been built in those days of foray, for one little, ruined, half-round tower rose from the brink of a ravine whose sides the hardiest of moss-troopers could scarcely have climbed. A partly filled-in moat led past the other, and in between stretched the curtain wall which now formed the facade of the house itself. Its arrow slits had been enlarged subsequently into narrow, stone-ribbed windows, and a new entrance made, while the ancient courtyard was girt with decrepit stables and barns. Most of the deep, winding dale still belonged to it, but the last Weston had signally failed to make a living out of it, or to meet his debts. He lived in a little town not far away, and let Scarthwaite for the shooting when he could, which explains how Major Kinnaird had taken it.

Ida looked about her as she came down the stairway. It led into a dark-paneled, stone-arched hall, which, since habitable space was rather scarce at Scarthwaite, served as general living-room. A fire was burning in the big, ancient hearth, and a handful of people were scattered here and there, waiting for dinner, which should have been ready a few minutes earlier. Kinnaird, who appeared a trifle impatient, was standing near his wife and a couple of shooting men, and his daughter was talking to one or two of his neighbors. Ida smiled as one of the latter glanced up at her, and she moved toward him when she reached the foot of the stairway. Ainslie, the owner of some quarries in the vicinity, was a middle-aged man whom she had met once or twice before.

When she had greeted him, she stood still a moment or two, listening to the murmurs of general conversation. Then she saw Kinnaird, who was standing not far from her, take out his watch.

"It's a little too bad of Weston. I shouldn't have waited for anybody else," he said. "As it is, I suppose we'll have to give him a minute or two longer."

The remark was evidently overheard, as perhaps Kinnaird intended. One of the others laughed.

"Ralph Weston was never punctual in his life," he said.

"Considering everything," observed one of the women standing near Ida, "it is rather curious that Weston should have promised to come at all. It must be a trifle embarrassing to dine at one's own place as another man's guest."

"Oh," said the man beside her, "Weston would go anywhere for a good dinner and a good glass of wine."

Ida, as it happened, had not heard what guests Mrs. Kinnaird had expected, and she started at the name. It was a moment or two later when she turned to her companion.

"This house belongs to the man they seem to be waiting for?" she asked.

Ainslie nodded.

"Yes," he said, "I suppose it does."

"Then why doesn't he live in it?"

"It takes a good deal to keep up a place of this kind, and, until Major Kinnaird came, it's some time since anybody seriously attempted it."

"Ah!" said Ida. "Mr. Weston's means are insufficient?"

"It's a tolerably open secret. There are a good many people similarly situated. A small and badly-kept estate is not a lucrative possession."

"Then why don't they keep it up efficiently?"

"Now," said Ainslie, "you're getting at the root of the matter. In my opinion it's largely a question of character. In fact, after the glimpses I've had of the wheat-growers in Dakota, Minnesota, and western Canada, it seems to me that if our people were content to live and work at home as they do out yonder they would acquire at least a moderate prosperity. Still, I'm rather afraid that wouldn't appeal to some of them. As it is, their wants are increasing, and the means of gratifying them steadily going down."

"All this applies to Mr. Weston in particular?"

"I don't think it would be a breach of confidence if I admitted that it does. Perhaps, however, I'm a little prejudiced. Weston doesn't like me. He blames me for encouraging his son in what he calls his 'iconoclastic' notions."

Ida, who was becoming interested, smiled.

"After all," she said, "the comparison isn't very unfavorable to the son. I believe the original iconoclasts were the image-breakers in Byzantium."

"Were they? I didn't know it," said Ainslie. "It's a moral certainty that Weston didn't, either. In fact, I've no doubt he fancies that Darwin and Bradlaugh, and he'd certainly include Cobden, invented them. Anyway, the lad wasn't very much of an iconoclast. He believed in his images, which were not the same as those his father worshiped; and all he wanted was to see them work. I think it hurt him when they didn't, or, at least, when they didn't appear to."

"Ah," said Ida, "that's rather too involved for me."

"Well," returned her companion, "we'll leave Weston out. I'm not sure about what he believes in, and it's probable that, he doesn't know himself, except that it's everything as it used to be. His wife was High Church, with altruistic notions, and it's no secret that she made things rather uncomfortable for her husband; but when she took the lad in hand she succeeded perhaps too well. You see, he wanted to apply her principles; and altruism leads to trouble when its possessor comes across formulas that don't stand for anything."

Just then there was a rattle of wheels outside, and a minute or two later a little full-fleshed man, with a heavy face, in conventional dress, entered the hall. He greeted those who stood about, when he had shaken hands with Kinnaird.

"Sorry I'm a little behind," he apologized. "Had to post over. I told Walters at the George to keep me the black mare. Instead, he let that waterworks chief navvy fellow have her. The horse he gave me would hardly face Scarside Rise."

One or two of the guests smiled, for the navvy in question was a rather famous engineer who had had a difference of opinion with Weston over certain gravel he desired to quarry on the Scarthwaite estate. Then Mrs. Kinnaird stepped forward, and they went in to dinner.

It was not yet dark outside, but the table was lighted; and Ida, who sat not far from Weston, watched him closely. She had at first been startled by the likeness between him and the man she had met in Canada, but she was now conscious of an increasing dissimilarity. There was a suggestion of grossness in the face of Major Kinnaird's guest, which had certainly not been a characteristic of Weston the packer. The older man's expression was petulant and arrogant; that of the one who had served her as camp attendant had been, as a rule, good-humoredly whimsical. Nor did she like the half-contemptuous inattention that Weston displayed when one or two of the others addressed him. In several cases he merely looked up and went on with his dinner as though it were too much trouble to answer. Ida felt reasonably sure that his manners would not have been tolerated in most of the primitive logging camps of western Canada. It became evident, however, that there were topics in which he took some interest, when a man who sat near turned to him.

"We were in the meadows by Ghyllfoot this afternoon, and they were looking very sour and rushy," he said. "They were drained once, weren't they?"

"They were," replied Weston, sharply. "It's stiff land. In my father's time, Little used to grow good wheat there. Still, even tile drains won't last forever. The soil gets in."

"You're correct about the wheat," said another man. "Little's nephew still talks about it. They used to grind it at the Ramside mills. Wouldn't it be worth while to have the meadows redrained, if only for the grass?"

Ida, who was watching him, fancied that this was a sore point with Weston, for he momentarily forgot his dinner.

"No," he answered curtly. "I took some trouble to make young Little understand it when he came to me with a nonsensical proposition not long ago. Like the rest of them, he's always wanting something. I asked him where he thought the money was coming from."

Ida was not surprised at this, though she knew that in western Canada the smaller settlers as a rule stripped themselves of every comfort, and lived in the most grim simplicity, that they might have more to give the land.

Then, as the man did not answer, Weston solemnly laid down his fork, with the manner of one making a painful sacrifice.

"There is a good deal of nonsense talked about farming in these days," he observed authoritatively. "You can put a fortune into drains and fences and buildings, but it's quite another matter to get two or three per cent, upon it back. In the old days I hadn't a horse in the stables worth less than sixty guineas, and my father thought nothing of giving twice as much. The other things were to match." He looked down the table with a flush of indignation in his heavy face. "Now, Walters at the George gives a navvy the horse I hired. Still, what can you expect when they pile up the taxes on us, and open new doors continually to the foreigners? We grew wheat at Scarthwaite, and it was ground at Ramside mill. The last time I looked in, Harvey had his stores full of flour from Minneapolis and Winnipeg. I asked him whether he didn't feel ashamed of having any hand in that kind of thing."

Ida could not check a smile. In Weston's case, at least, the reason why western wheat had displaced the local product was tolerably plain. This full-fleshed man differed, she fancied, in most essentials from the lean farmers who drove the half-mile furrows, or ripped up their patches of virgin sod with plodding oxen on the vast expanses of the prairie. While he indulged his senses and bought sixty-guinea horses, they rose at four or earlier, and, living on pork and flour and green tea, worked in grim earnest until it was dark. Blizzard and hail and harvest frost brought them to the verge of ruin now and then but could not drive them over it. They set their lips, cut down the grocery bill, and, working still harder, went on again. A good many of them had, as she knew, come from England.

Then Weston appeared to remember his dinner, and made a little vague gesture which seemed to indicate that there was no more to be said.

"I don't want to hear about drains and deeper tillage while we let every foreigner pour his wheat and chilled beef into our market. It's nonsense," he asserted.

Some one started another topic; and an hour or so later most of the little party strolled out on the terrace in front of the house. It was almost dark now, but the evening was no more than pleasantly cool, and Ida sat down on an old stone seat.

Scarthwaite faced toward the west, and she looked out across a deep, green valley toward the sweep of upland and heather moor that cut black and solemn against a paling saffron glow. It was very still, though now and then a bleating of sheep rang sharply out of the wisps of mist that streaked the lower meadows. Perhaps it was the stillness or the scent of the firs that climbed the hollow of the ghyll behind the house that reminded Ida of the man who had strolled with her through the shadow of the giant redwoods of the Pacific Slope. In any case, she was thinking of him when Arabella Kinnaird stopped for a moment at her side and glanced toward Weston, who stood not far away.

"You heard that man's name. Did you notice a resemblance to anybody we have met?" she inquired.

"Yes," said Ida. "Of course, it may be accidental."

Her companion laughed.

"I don't think it is. In view of what I once told you on the subject, it's a matter I mean to investigate."

She moved away; but it was Ida who first was afforded an opportunity of deciding the question, for a few minutes later Ainslie strolled toward her. When he sat down beside her, she indicated the waste, of climbing pasture, which ran up, interspersed with gorse bushes and clumps of heather, to the dusky moor.

"Not a sign of cultivation," she said. "I suppose that grass is never broken up? How much foundation is there for Mr. Weston's views?"

Ainslie laughed.

"I'm afraid I'm hardly competent to decide, but there are people who agree with him. Still, I think it's reasonably certain that a good deal of the higher land that now carries a few head of sheep would grow oats and other things. It's largely a question of economics. Somebody would have to spend a good deal of money and labor on it first, and the result, which wouldn't be very apparent for two or three years, would be a little uncertain then. It depends on how much the man who undertook it wanted back to make the thing worth while."

"They are content with food, and sometimes very indifferent shelter, in western Canada."

"There," said Ainslie, "you have the thing in a nutshell. You have, no doubt, formed some idea of Weston's wants, which are rather numerous. In fact, some of us seem to consider it the correct thing to cultivate them. The more wants you have the greater man you are."

Ida smiled a little as she remembered a man of considerable importance in the wheat-lands of Assiniboia, whom she had last seen sitting, clad in blue shirt and very old trousers, on a huge machine which a double span of reeking horses hauled through the splendid grain. He had driven it since sunrise, and it was dusk of evening then, and his wants were, as she knew, remarkably simple. He bore his share of the burden under a burning sun, but it seemed to her that, had Weston been in his place, he would have ridden around that farm with a gloved hand on his hip, and would have raised it only now and then, imperiously, to direct the toilers. Then she thought of another man, who was like him in some respects, and was then, in all probability, plodding through the lonely bush.

"You mentioned a son," she said. "What became of him?"

"He went out to Canada. Quarreled with his father. As I believe I suggested, the lad was at heart a rebel." Ainslie smiled rather dryly. "A good many of us are. He wouldn't see that his mother's ideas were apt to get him into trouble when he tried to apply them."

Ida sat silent for a few moments. There was no longer any doubt in her mind that Weston who had turned his back on Scarthwaite was identical with Weston the camp-packer.

"Do you remember what they quarreled over?" she asked at length.

"Yes," said Ainslie, who was inclined to wonder at her interest in the subject, "it was water-finding. It's a thing of which you probably have never heard."

"I have," said Ida. "Won't you go on?"

"Well," continued Ainslie, "there was a tenant on this estate who was rather more badly off than the rest of them. He had a piece of upland with rock under it, and in a dry season—though we don't often get one—it was with the greatest trouble he got water enough for his stock. He asked young Weston to find him a likely spot to drive a well. The lad was walking over one parched meadow with the hazel twig in his hand, when his father came upon the procession—everybody belonging to the farm was out with him. Weston, I heard, went purple when he saw what was going on, and, from his point of view, his indignation was perhaps comprehensible. His son was openly, before one of the tenants and a parcel of farm-hands, making use of a superstitious device in which no sane person could believe. Weston, as I remember it, compared him to a gipsy fortune-teller, and went on through the gamut of impostor, mountebank and charlatan, before he commanded him to desist on the moment. I don't quite know what came next, though something was said about a lifted riding-crop, but within the week Clarence started for Canada."

"He abandoned the attempt to find water?"

Ainslie smiled.

"The farmer dug a well in that meadow, and I believe he uses it still. He held a lease, and Weston couldn't get rid of him."

He looked rather hard at Ida, and was slightly astonished at the sparkle in her eyes.

"I'm afraid I've been somewhat talkative," he said.

"No," Ida assured him, and he saw that she was stirred. "Thank you for telling me."

He moved away; and by and by Arabella Kinnaird and one of the other women approached the seat. Arabella left her companion a moment, and made a little whimsical gesture as she met Ida's gaze.

"I've been throwing away a good many blandishments on Weston," she observed. "He appears prudently reticent on the subject of his relations, and if he has any in Canada, it's evident that he isn't proud of them. Still, I haven't abandoned the amiable intention of extorting a little more information from him."



CHAPTER XVIII

WESTON'S ADVOCATE

A week had passed when Weston, who apparently had some business with Kinnaird, drove over to Scarthwaite again. This time he brought a daughter, who, it appeared, lived for the most part with some more prosperous members of the family. Arriving a little before lunch, they remained until the evening. As it happened, Miss Weston displayed what she evidently considered a kindly interest in Ida, and graciously patronized her as a stranger and a Colonial, who was necessarily ignorant of a good many of the little amenities of life in the old country.

Her intentions were no doubt laudable, but the methods she adopted to set the stranger at her ease were not those most likely to endear the insular English to their cousins across the Atlantic. Ida, to begin with, had not only a spice of temper but also no great reverence for forms and formulas, and the people that she was accustomed to meeting were those who had set their mark upon wide belts of forest and long leagues of prairie. At first she was quietly amused by the patronage of a woman whose right to bestow it consisted apparently in an acquaintance with English people of station, and some proficiency at bridge; but by and by her condescension grew wearisome, and finally exasperating. Miss Weston, however, could not have been expected to recognize this. She was a tall, pale woman, with a coldly formal manner and some taste in dress.

There were several other guests in the house, and the party spent most of the hot afternoon about the tennis net and lounging under the shadow of a big copper beech on the lawn. Once when Miss Weston left her to play in a set at tennis, Arabella Kinnaird leaned over the back of Ida's chair.

"You seem to have made rather a favorable impression upon Julia Weston, and, as a rule, she's unapproachable," she said, with a mischievous smile.

Ida's eyebrows straightened, which, to those acquainted with her, was a rather ominous sign.

"Won't you keep that woman away from me?" she begged. "I don't want to be rude, but if I see very much more of her, I may not be able to help it. In one way, I'm sorry I met her. You're not all like that."

"Well," said Arabella, "perhaps it is a pity. There really are some of us to whom you could talk without having your pet illusions about the old country shattered. In fact, I can think of one or two women about here who would strengthen them. Can't you, Mr. Ainslie?"

Ainslie, who was standing near them, smiled.

"Oh, yes," he said. "Unfortunately, however, they are, as a rule, retiring. It's the other kind that is usually in evidence. Do you feel very badly disappointed with us, Miss Stirling?"

"No," replied Ida, with a thoughtfulness which brought the smile more plainly into his eyes. "In fact, I want to think well of you. It's a thing we wouldn't quite admit, but at bottom I believe we all do."

Then she turned to Arabella.

"By the way, what has become of Mr. Weston?"

"He is shut up with my father in the library; and there are reasons for supposing that his business requires the consumption of a considerable quantity of soda and whisky. The major, I am afraid, will be a trifle difficult to get on with this evening. As a matter of fact, he isn't used to it, though he was, one understands, rather popular at the mess table. That's a trifle significant, considering what is said about us, isn't it, Mr. Ainslie?"

"Ah," said Ainslie, "we're a maligned people; and the pity of it is that it's our own people who give us away. You don't believe in doing that in the Colonies?"

"No," laughed Ida, "we are rather fond of making it clear that we are quite above the average as a people. However, it's excusable, perhaps, for, after all, there's a germ of truth in it. I think Miss Kinnaird will agree with that."

Arabella leaned a little farther over her chair.

"I'll leave you to talk it out with Mr. Ainslie. But there's another matter. Does Miss Weston recall to you anybody we have met?"

"No," said Ida, with a somewhat incautious decisiveness. "If you mean our camp-packer, she certainly does not."

Arabella understood this to mean that any comparison of the kind suggested would be derogatory to the packer, which was somewhat significant.

"Well," she said, "there is at least a physical resemblance, and though I haven't probed the matter very deeply, yet I've not abandoned it."

Then she laughed and turned to Ainslie.

"You and Miss Stirling can thrash out the question."

She strolled away, and Ainslie watched Ida, whose eyes were following Miss Weston at the tennis net.

"Yes," he remarked, "we play these games rather well; and, after all, is there any reason why we shouldn't? There are a good many people in this country who don't consider them as of the first importance."

"Oh," said Ida, "I'm really not looking for faults. Why should you suspect me of such an unpleasant attitude?"

"Well," observed her companion reflectively, "I can't help thinking that we now and then give our visitors wrong impressions by showing them the wrong things. Personally, I should recommend an inspection of our mines and mills and factories. Besides, one has rather a fancy that some of our young men, who were brought up, we'll say, to play tennis well, have shown that they can do rather more than that in western Canada."

Ida's eyes softened a little as she recalled a weary, gray-faced man limping back up the hillside one eventful morning; but the turn that the conversation had taken had its effect on her, and that effect was to have its result. Like others born in the newer lands, she believed first of all in practical efficiency, and she had learned during journeys made with her father that the man with few wants and many abilities, or indeed the man with only one of the latter strenuously applied to a useful purpose, is the type in most favor in western Canada. Graces do not count for much in the west, nor does the assumption of ability carry a man as far as it sometimes does in older communities. As Stirling had once said, when they want a chopper in that country they make him chop, and facility in posing is of very little service when one is called on to grapple with virgin forest or stubborn rock.

Young as Ida was, she had a grip of essential things, and a dislike of shams. It generally happened, too, that, when she felt strongly on any subject, she sooner or later expressed her thoughts in forcible words; and before that afternoon was over she and Arabella Kinnaird between them disturbed the composure of more than one of Mrs. Kinnaird's guests.

Tea was being laid out on a little table beneath the beech when Weston strolled across the lawn. He was redder in face than when Ida had last seen him, and a trifle heavier of expression. Pushing unceremoniously past two of the women, he dropped into a basket-chair, which bent under him, and glanced around at the others with coldly, assertive eyes. Ida, watching him, became conscious of a sense of repulsion and indignation. This arrogant, indulgent, useless man had, it seemed, not the manners of a western ranch-hand. He accepted a cup of tea from Mrs. Kinnaird with an ungraciousness which aroused Ida to downright anger; and shortly afterward he contrived to spill a quantity of the liquid upon Arabella's dress, for which he offered no excuses, though he blamed the narrow-bottomed cup. Then some one, who of course could not foresee the result, asked Arabella if she would show them some of her Canadian sketches.

Miss Kinnaird made no objection, and when, soon after the tea was cleared away, the easel she sent for had been set up in the shadow of the beech, she displayed on it several small canvases and water-color drawings. There were vistas of snow mountains, stretches of frothing rivers, and colonnades of towering firs, until at last she laid a canvas on the easel.

"This," she said, "is, I think, the best figure drawing I ever did."

Ida, leaning forward in her chair, felt the blood creep into her face. There was no doubt that the sketch was striking. It showed a man standing tensely poised, with a big, glinting ax in his hand. He was lean and lithely muscular, and his face was brown and very grim; but the artist had succeeded in fixing in its expression the elusive but recognizable something which is born of restraint, clean living, and arduous physical toil. It is to be seen in the eyes of those who, living in Spartan simplicity, make long marches with the dog-sledges in the Arctic frost, drive the logs down roaring rivers, or toil sixteen hours daily under a blazing sun in the western harvest field. In all probability it was as plainly stamped on the honest countenance of many an unconsidered English Tommy who plodded doggedly forward with the relief columns across the dusty veldt. Drivers of great expresses, miners, quarrymen, now and then wear that look. Springing, as it does, not from strength of body, but from the subjugation of the latter and all fleshy shrinking and weariness, it links man with the greatness of the unseen.

There was only the one figure silhouetted against long rows of dusky pines, but the meaning of the way in which the hard, scarred hands were clenched on the big ax was very plain, and Ida could fill in from memory the form of the big chopper and the clusters of expectant men.

"Excellent!" said one of the guests. "That fellow means to fight. He's in hard training, too, and that has now and then a much bigger effect than the toughening of his muscles upon the man who submits himself to it. Is it a portrait or a type?"

The speaker was from the metropolis, and while Arabella hesitated, Ida answered him with a suggestive ring in her voice.

"It's both, one should like to think," she said. "The man came from England; and if you can send us out more of that type we shall be satisfied."

Then she and the questioner became conscious of the awkward silence that had fallen upon the rest. They belonged to the dales, and they glanced covertly at Weston, who was gazing at the picture, purple in face, and with a very hard look in his eyes. Ida guessed that it was the scarred workman's hands and the track-grader's old blue shirt and tattered duck that had hurt his very curious pride. Still, it was evident that he could face the situation.

"Yes," he said, a trifle hoarsely, "it's a portrait—an excellent one. In fact, as some of you are quite aware, it's my son."

He rose, and crossing a strip of lawn sat down heavily near Ida. The latter, looking around, saw Arabella's satisfied smile suddenly subside; but the next moment Weston, leaning forward, laid his hand roughly on her arm.

"Why Clarence permitted that portrait to be painted I don't quite understand, though he was fond of flying in the face of all ideas of decency," he said. "You must have met him out yonder. What was he doing?"

"Shoveling gravel on a railroad that my father was grading," said Ida, with rather grim amusement, for she was determined that the man should face the plain reality, even if it hurt him.

"Shoveling gravel!" said Weston. "But he is my son."

"I'm afraid that doesn't count out yonder. In any case, he's in one sense in reasonably good company. Did you send your son to Sandhurst or an English university?"

"I didn't," said the man, gazing at her with hot, confused anger in his eyes. "For one thing, he hadn't brains enough, and, for another, there were too many charges on the property. What do you mean by good company?"

"Just a moment before I answer. Why did you turn him out?"

"That does not describe it. He went. We had a difference of opinion. He would hear no reason."

"Exactly," said Miss Weston, who now appeared close by. "Since you seem to have heard a little about the matter, I feel I must say that my brother deliberately left us at a time when his father had expected him to be of service to him."

Ida did not know whether the others could hear what was being said, as there was a strip of lawn between them and where she sat, but she felt that it did not greatly matter. She had no pity for this man or his daughter, who preferred to malign the absent rather than to admit an unpleasant fact. She would strip them of any solace they might find in shams, after which there was a little more to be said.

"The difference of opinion was, I believe, decided with a riding-crop," she said. "Still, that is a side issue, and I will tell you what I meant by good company. We have quite a few of your graduates out yonder laying railroad ties, as well as lawyers who have got into trouble over trust money, and army men who couldn't meet their turf debts or were a little too smart at cards. Some of them are of unexceptionable family—at least from your point of view. As a rule, they sleep packed like cattle in reeking redwood shacks, and either dress in rags or mend their own clothes. Among their companions are ranchers who can't live all the year on the produce of their half-cleared land, absconders from half the Pacific Slope cities, and runaway sailormen. The task set before them every morning would kill most of you."

Weston, who had winced once or twice, glanced apprehensively toward the rest. They were sitting very still, and their appearance suggested that, whether warrantable or not, they were listening.

"His insane folly has brought him down to that?" he asked.

Ida straightened herself a little, with a sparkle in her eyes.

"I don't think there has been any very great descent," she went on. "You must try to realize that those men are not wastrels now, however they may have lived in England, Montreal, or the cities down Puget Sound. They're rending new roads through the mountains to let in progress and civilization, and making fast the foundations of the future greatness of a wide and prosperous land. Already, because of what they and their kind have done, you can travel through it without seeing a ragged, slatternly woman, or a broken-down, desperate man. Besides, many of them, and certainly most of the small bush ranchers, lead lives characterized by the old heroic virtues that seem to have gone out of fashion in the cities, though you'll find some of them held up for emulation in the Pauline epistles."

Weston gazed at her in blank astonishment. She made a little, half-contemptuous gesture.

"You can't understand that? Well, one really couldn't expect you to. You have never starved your body, or forced it day after day to a task that was crushing you. Those men work in icy water, keep the trail with bleeding feet, and sleep in melting snow. They bear these things cheerfully, and I think there are no men on this earth who can match their wide charity. The free companions never turn away the ragged stranger. What is theirs is his, from the choicest of their provisions to the softest spruce-twig bed."

She laughed, and then continued:

"That's in a general way. To be particular, I'll try to tell you what Clarence Weston has done. It's worth hearing."

She had spoken more clearly the last few moments, and it became evident at length that she had secured the attention of everybody. With an impulsive gesture she invited them all to listen.

"I'll tell you what that picture leaves out," she said. "There was an old man in the railroad camp, played-out and useless. The boys were handling him roughly because he'd spoiled their supper rather often, when Clarence Weston stepped in. The old man, you must understand, hadn't a shadow of a claim on him. Now, those are not nice men to make trouble with when they have a genuine grievance, and there were three or four of them quite ready to lay hands on Weston, while there was nobody who sympathized with him. He stood facing them, one man against an angry crowd, and held them off from the stranger who had no claim on him. Have you heard of anything finer?

"Again, when Arabella lamed herself up on a great snow range—he'd carried our food and blankets since sunrise—he went down to bring help in the darkness, through the timber and along the edge of horrible crags. The man had badly cut his foot, and the wound opened on the march, but when he made the camp, almost too weary to crawl, he went back right away, so that the Indians he took up might get there a little quicker."

She broke off for a moment, with a flush in her face and a curious little laugh.

"Now," she said, "I think I've made the thing quite plain, and I'm glad I did."

There was an expressive silence for a moment or two, and then Major Kinnaird looked at the others.

"I know nothing about the first incident, but I think that Miss Stirling could have gone a little further when she described the last one," he said. "My daughter, who was badly injured, would probably have been left another day on the range, without food or any attention, if it had not been for the courage and endurance the man displayed. I wish to say, however, that I had no idea he was any connection of Mr. Weston's until this moment."

Ida's heart warmed toward Kinnaird. Reserved and formal as he was, the man could be honest, and it was evident that his few quiet words had made almost as deep an impression as the outbreak to which she had been impelled. There was another rather awkward silence; and then Weston, who seemed to have forgotten the others, made a little abrupt movement.

"What had my son to do with you?" he asked.

The question was flung at Kinnaird, but Ida saw that it was a relief to him when she answered it.

"My father hired him. He was our camp-packer, the man who set up the tents, made the fires, and poled the canoes," she said.

Weston stood up and, looking hard at Kinnaird, straightened himself. His face was an unpleasant red, and there was badly-suppressed anger in his eyes.

"Time is getting on, and we have rather a long drive," he said. "I may ask Miss Stirling's leave to call on her later. In the meanwhile, if Mrs. Kinnaird will excuse us——"

His hostess made no attempt to keep him; and, as he moved away, his daughter stopped for a moment beside Ida's chair.

"I don't know whether what you have done was excusable or not, but you have, at least, succeeded in making the breach between Clarence and his father wider than ever," she said. "That was probably what you intended?"

Ida was momentarily puzzled.

"Intended?" she said. "If either of you had done your brother justice, I don't think I should have mentioned him at all."

Miss Weston smiled scornfully and moved away, but the blood crept into the face of the girl she left. That she had outraged these people's sense of their importance she felt reasonably sure, and their resentment, which she admitted was, perhaps, more or less warranted, did not trouble her, but the drift of Miss Weston's last observation filled her with anger. They evidently regarded her as a raw Colonial, endued with no sense of what was fitting, who could not expect to be countenanced by an insolvent land-owning family. This was amusing; but the suggestion that she recognized the fact, and because of it had endeavored to alienate Clarence Weston from his relatives, who had apparently been very glad to get rid of him, was a very different matter. However, she recovered her composure with an effort, and succeeded in taking a part in the general conversation which broke out when Weston drove away.



CHAPTER XIX

ILLUMINATION

It was three or four months later when Ida was carried swiftly westward through the London streets toward twelve o'clock one night. The motor purred and clicked smoothly, slinging bright beams of light in front of it as it twisted eel-like through the traffic. The glass that would have sheltered Ida from the cool night breeze was down, but she scarcely noticed the roar of the city or the presence of Arabella and Mrs. Kinnaird.

She was thinking of that afternoon at Scarthwaite, and wondering, as she had done somewhat frequently since then, what had impelled her to speak in that impulsive fashion. It had not been, as she now recognized, merely a desire to justify Clarence Weston in the eyes of his English relatives, for she had felt reasonably sure that this was a thing beyond accomplishment while he remained a railroad-hand or a bush chopper. The other explanation was that she had spoken to reassure herself; but that, as she would have admitted, seemed scarcely necessary, for in this respect he did not need an advocate. There was the third alternative, that the attitude of Weston and his daughter toward the absent man had fanned her dislike of shams into a blaze of downright rage, and that she had merely ridden a somewhat reckless tilt against her pet aversions.

One thing, at least, was certain. Weston had not called on her, to ask for any further information about his son; and, for that matter, she would have been astonished had he done so. She realized now that there was truth in what Clarence Weston said when he told her that the failures were soon forgotten. That, however, was a matter that depended largely on one's point of view, and she could not regard him as a failure.

There was in Ida Stirling a vein of wholesome simplicity which made for clearness of vision, and she seldom shrank from looking even an unwelcome truth squarely in the face. That Clarence Weston was probably shoveling railroad gravel did not count with her, but she was reasonably sure that the fact that she was a young woman with extensive possessions would have a deterrent effect on him. She once or twice had felt a curious compelling tenderness for him when in his presence, but reflection had come later, and she could not be sure that she loved him well enough to marry him, should he offer her the opportunity. During the last few months she had become more uncertain on this point, for her English visit was having an effect on her that she had not expected.

In the meanwhile the insistent clamor of the city was forcing itself on her attention, until at length she became engrossed by it. The theaters had just been closed, and the streets resounded with the humming of motors, the drumming of hoofs and the rattle of wheels. They also were flooded with what seemed to her garish light, for she had swept through many a wooden town lying wrapped in darkness beside its railroad track. The hansoms and motors came up in battalions, and in most of them she could see men of leisure in conventional white and black and lavishly dressed women, while the sidewalks streamed with a further host of pleasure-seekers. She wondered when these people slept, or when they worked, if indeed in one sense some of them worked at all. Even in the winter they had nothing like this in Montreal, and the contrast between it and the strenuous, grimly practical activity of the Canadian railroad camp or the lonely western ranch was more striking still. There men rose to toil with the dawn, and slept when the soft dusk crept up across solemn pines or silent prairie. These men, however, saw and handled the results of their toil, great freight-trains speeding over the trestles they had built, vast bands of cattle, and leagues of splendid wheat. After all, the genius of London is administrative and not constructive, and it is the latter that appeals most directly to the Colonial. One can see the forests go down or the great rocks rent, but the results that merely figure in the balance-sheet are less apparent.

There was another matter that claimed Ida's attention. She would meet Gregory Kinnaird at the dance, and she had seen a good deal of him during the last few months. He was not formal like his father, and in most respects she liked the man; and there was no doubt whatever that he neglected no opportunity for enjoying her company. Indeed, he had of late drawn rather close to her, and she wondered a little uneasily how far this approachment was to go. London, she was conscious, was getting hold of her, and there was, after all, a good deal it had to offer that strongly appealed to her.

By and by the motor stopped before a house with balconies and ponderous pillars, and she and her companions went up the ample stairway and into several uncomfortably crowded, flower-bedecked rooms. Ida, however, was getting used to the lights and the music, the gleam of gems, the confused hum of voices, and the rustle of costly draperies, and, though she admitted that she liked it all, they no longer had the same exhilarating effect on her. She danced with one or two men, and then, as she sat alone for a moment, Gregory Kinnaird crossed the room toward her. His face was a little more serious than usual. As a rule, he took things lightly.

"I think this is mine," he said, as the orchestra recommenced. "Still, perhaps you have had enough? I can find you a nice cool place where we can talk."

She went with him, because it certainly was uncomfortably warm where she was, and, besides, she was impelled by a certain curiosity to ascertain just how they stood. He passed through one supper-room into another, and then drew back a heavy curtain from an open window.

"It's quiet, anyway," he said, and they passed out on to a little balcony where, late in the year as it was, a row of potted shrubs cut them off from view.

Below, there were dusky, leafless trees, among which a few big lights gleamed, and the roar of the city came up across them brokenly. Ida sat down, and a ray of light fell upon her companion, who leaned against the rails. Gregory Kinnaird was well-favored physically, and bore the stamp of a military training. He was, she understood, captain of a rather famous regiment, and she liked his direct gaze, which did not detract from his easy suavity of manner. However, he appeared somewhat unusually diffident that evening.

"You like all this?" he asked, with a little wave of his hand which, she fancied, was intended to indicate the distant roar of the city as well as the music and dancing in the rooms behind her.

"Yes," she said with a smile, for he appeared to take it for granted, as others had done, that they had no brilliant social functions in Montreal. "I think I do; but when you have so much of it, the thing seems a little aimless, doesn't it?"

"Aimless?" inquired Kinnaird, who appeared to ponder over this until a light broke in on him. "Well," he admitted, "I suppose it is. Still, what else could half of them do?"

Ida laughed good-humoredly; and the man made a little expostulatory gesture.

"I generally avoid any discussions of that kind. They never lead to anything," he said. "I was wondering whether you could learn to like London as well as Montreal?"

"I don't know," replied Ida, in her most matter-of-fact manner.

"Oh," said her companion, "it seems a senseless question, but I want to explain. I have been offered an opportunity to go away—to do something—very soon. I should be away two years, at least; and as the notice is a short one, I have practically to make up my mind to-night."

It almost appeared that he had expected Ida to show some sign of interest, or, perhaps, concern, but none was perceptible.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"To a colony in tropical Africa. They want somebody to hammer a native levy into shape and keep the niggers in some kind of order."

"Don't they have fever there?"

"I believe it isn't a particularly salubrious place," said Kinnaird, smiling, "but that kind of thing affects only some constitutions, and it makes promotion quicker."

Ida, who had perused a good many works of travel, knew a little about the fevers that afflict the country in question. In fact, she fancied that she knew more than the man did; but his careless indifference to the personal hazard pleased her. She noticed that he had spoken naturally, as he felt, without any idea of producing an effect on her.

"What is the result of that kind of work?" she asked.

"The result?" queried Kinnaird, with a puzzled air. "A battalion of thick-headed niggers with some slight knowledge of civilized drill, and, perhaps, a few stockades blown up in the bush."

Then, as he saw the half-veiled amusement in her eyes, a light seemed to break in on him.

"If one managed the thing efficiently, it would, perhaps, lead to the offer of a second-rate semi-administrative post somewhere else in the tropics, though I believe the emoluments are not what one could call liberal."

"That is all?"

"Yes," said Kinnaird. "I'm afraid one couldn't expect anything further."

Ida smiled rather curiously. She liked the man, but it was clear that his mental capacity had its limits. Though she would not have had him expatiate on the fact, she had expected him to realize that his mission was to uphold the white man's supremacy, and establish tranquillity, commerce and civilization in a barbarous land. It was, however, evident that he did not understand this. He was going out, as he said, to drill thick-headed niggers, and would, in all probability, content himself with doing that.

Then he turned toward her again.

"What it leads to doesn't matter very much. I've been getting away from the point," he said. "You see, I don't know whether I'm going at all, at the moment. It depends a good deal on what you have to say to me."

Ida started a little, though she had expected something of this kind. Still, she recovered her serenity quickly, and in a moment she looked at him inquiringly with calm eyes.

"I didn't mean to say anything for some while yet, but this thing has forced my hand," he said. "You see, I must let them know during the next day or two whether I'm going."

He broke off for a moment, and his manner became diffident.

"Miss Stirling," he added, "I think I fell in love with you the second or third time I saw you, if not the first, and as I have seen you rather often since then, you can, perhaps, imagine what I feel now. I'm afraid there is no very strong reason why you should look kindly on such a man as I am, but I came here to-night to ask if you would marry me."

Ida quietly met his gaze. The man was well-favored physically, honest, courteous and considerate, and in many ways she liked him. Indeed, she wondered with a certain uneasiness how far she had allowed the latter fact to become apparent, for it was quite another matter to marry him, as she now realized.

"Is this offer quite spontaneous?" she asked.

Kinnaird flushed a little, but she thought the more of him for the candor with which he answered her.

"In the first place, I believe my mother put the thing into my head," he admitted. "After that, it got hold of me—and I was rather glad that my people were apparently satisfied that it did. It promised to save trouble, for I should naturally have gone on with it if they had done their utmost to thwart me."

He broke off abruptly, and Ida met his gaze.

"Thank you," she said. "The honesty of that admission would have counted a good deal in your favor had the thing been possible."

The man straightened himself and clenched one hand.

"Ah!" he said. "Then it's quite out of the question?"

Ida saw the blood rise into his face, and noticed the sudden hardness in his eyes. Her answer evidently had hurt him more than she expected, and she felt sorry for him. The man's quietness and control and the absence of any dramatic protestation had a favorable effect on her, and she was almost certain that she could have married him had she met him a year earlier. In the meanwhile, however, she had met another man, dressed in old blue duck, with hands hard and scarred; and the well-groomed soldier became of less account as she recalled the man she had left in the mountains. Then Kinnaird turned to her again.

"Can't you give me a chance?" he said. "If it's necessary, I'll wait; and in the meanwhile I may do something worth while out yonder, if that's any inducement."

"I'm very sorry," replied Ida. "I'm afraid it wouldn't be."

She looked him steadily in the eyes, and he had sense enough to recognize that no words of his would move her. Though it was not an easy matter, he retained his self-control.

"Well," he admitted, "it hurts, but I must bear it. And I want to say that I'm glad in several ways that I met you." Then the blood crept into his face again. "I should, at least, like you to think kindly of me, and I'm rather afraid appearances are against me. Because that is so, there's a thing that I should like you to understand. I'd have been proud to marry you had you been a beggar."

"Thank you," said Ida, who saw that he meant it. "I'm more sorry than ever, but the thing is—out of the question."

Kinnaird gravely held out his arm, but she intimated by a little sign that she did not wish to go back with him, and in a moment the curtains swung to behind him, and he had gone.

Ida became conscious that she was growing cold; but she sat quite still for at least five minutes, thinking hard, and wondering why she felt so sorry to give up Gregory Kinnaird. It was a somewhat perplexing thing that one could be really fond of an eligible man and yet shrink from marrying him, and there was no doubt whatever that the one she had just sent away had in several respects a good deal to offer her.

She admitted that London was, as she expressed it, getting hold of her. She supposed that its influence was insidious, for she no longer looked on its frivolities with half-amused contempt, as she had at first. She realized the vast control that that city had over so much of the rest of the world, and that when some of the men with whom she had lightly laughed and chatted pulled the strings, new industries sprang up far away in the scorching tropics or on the desolate prairie, and new laws were made for hosts of dusky people. It was certainly a legitimate bargain Kinnaird had suggested. She had wealth sufficient for them both, and he could offer her the entry into a world where wealth well directed meant power, and this she undoubtedly desired to possess. There was a vein of ambition in this girl whose father had risen to affluence from a very humble origin, and while she listened to Gregory Kinnaird she had felt that she could rise further still.

She knew that she had will and charm enough to secure, with the aid of her father's money, almost what place she would, and for a few moments she saw before her dazzling possibilities, and then, with the resolution that was part of her nature, she turned her eyes away. After all, though a high position with the power and pride of leading was a thing to be desired, life, she felt, had as much to offer in different ways; and she recalled a very weary man limping, gray in face, up the steep range. The picture was very plainly before her as she sat there shivering a little, and her heart grew soft toward the wanderer. She knew at last why nothing that Kinnaird could have said or offered would have moved her, and she looked down at the lamps that blinked among the leafless boughs with a great tenderness shining in her eyes. The stir of the city fell faintly on unheeding ears, and she was conscious only of a longing for the stillness of the vast pine forest through which she had wandered with Weston at her side.

Then she rose abruptly and went back into the lighted room. Though she danced once or twice, and talked to a number of people who, perhaps fortunately, did not seem to expect her to say anything very intelligent, she was glad when Mrs. Kinnaird sent for her, and they and Arabella drove away together. The elder lady troubled her with no questions; but soon after they reached home she came into the room where Ida sat, and as she left the door open the girl saw Gregory go down the stairway with a letter in his hand. He met his sister near the foot of it, and his voice, which seemed a trifle strained, came up to Ida clearly.

"I'll just run out and post this. I've told those people that I'll go as soon as they like," he said.

Then Mrs. Kinnaird quietly closed the door before she crossed the room and sat down near the girl.

"It's rather hard to bear," she said. "Perhaps I feel it the more because Arabella will leave me soon."

The woman's quietness troubled Ida, and her eyes grew hazy.

"Oh," she said, "though it isn't quite my fault, how you must blame me. It's most inadequate, but I can only say that I'm very sorry."

"I suppose what you told Gregory is quite irrevocable?" inquired her companion.

Ida saw the tense anxiety in the woman's eyes, and her answer cost her an effort.

"Yes, quite," she said. "I wish I could say anything else."

"I can't blame you, my dear. I blame only myself," said Mrs. Kinnaird. "I'm afraid I brought this trouble on Gregory, and it makes my share of it harder to bear. Still, there is something to be said. I wanted Gregory to marry you because I wanted him near me, but I can't have you think that I would have tried to bring about a match between him and any girl with money. My dear," and she leaned forward toward her companion, "I am fond of you."

Ida made a gesture of comprehension and sympathy, and the little quiet lady went on again.

"There is just another thing," she said. "Gregory will have very little—a few hundred a year—but it would not have been a dreadfully one-sided bargain. He had, after all, a good deal to offer."

Ida raised a hand in protest.

"Oh," she said, "I know."

"Still," continued Mrs. Kinnaird, "I want you to feel quite sure that he loved you. Without that nothing else would have counted. You will believe it, won't you? It is due to my son."

She rose with a little sigh.

"Things never go as one would wish them to."

Ida was very sorry for her, but there was so little that could be said.

"I shall always think well of Gregory," she answered. "You will try to forgive me?"

Then an impulsive restless longing came over her with the knowledge that she had brought this woman bitter sorrow.

"I will go home," she broke out. "It will hurt you to see me near you when Gregory has gone away. There are friends of ours—Mrs. Claridge and her daughter, you met them—leaving for Paris on Wednesday, and they sail for New York in a week or two."

It was a relief to both of them to discuss a matter of this kind, and, before Mrs. Kinnaird left her, all had been arranged. Still, it was not Montreal and its winter amusements that Ida thought of then, but the shadowy bush, and the green river that stole out from among the somber pines.



CHAPTER XX

IDA CLAIMS AN ACQUAINTANCE

It was early on a fine spring evening when Clarence Weston lay somewhat moodily on the wooded slope of the mountain that rises behind Montreal. It is not very much of a mountain, though it forms a remarkably fine natural park, and from where Weston lay he could look down upon a vast sweep of country and the city clustering round the towers of Notre Dame. It is, from almost any point of view, a beautiful city, for its merchants and financiers of English and Scottish extraction have emulated the love of artistic symmetry displayed by the old French Canadian religious orders, as well as their lavish expenditure, in the buildings they have raised. Churches, hospitals, banks and offices delight the eye, and no pall of coal-smoke floats over Montreal. It lies clean and sightly between its mountain and the river under the clear Canadian sky.

On the evening in question the faintest trace of thin blue vapor etherealized its clustering roofs and stately towers, and the great river, spanned by its famous bridge, gleamed athwart the flat champaign, a wide silver highway to the distant sea. Beyond it, stretches of rolling country ran back league after league into the vast blue distance where Vermont lay. Still, Weston, who was jaded and cast down, frowned at the city and felt that he had a grievance against it. During the last week or two he had, for the most part vainly, endeavored to interview men of importance connected with finance and company promoting. Very few of them would see him at all, and those with whom he gained audience listened to what he had to say with open impatience, or with a half-amused toleration that was almost as difficult to bear. Perhaps this was not astonishing, as most of them already had had somewhat costly experiences with what they called wild-cat mining schemes.

There was, however, a certain vein of dogged persistency in Clarence Weston; and, almost intolerably galling as he-found it, he would still have continued to obtrude his presence on gentlemen who had no desire whatever to be favored with it, and to waylay them in the hotels, but for the fact that the little money he had brought with him was rapidly running out. One can, in case of stern necessity, put one's pride in one's pocket, though the operation is occasionally painful, but one cannot dispense with food and shelter, and the latter are not, as a rule, to be obtained in a Canadian city except in exchange for money. Weston, who had had no lunch that day, took out the little roll of bills still left in his wallet, and, when he had flicked them over, it became unpleasantly clear that he could not prosecute the campaign more than a very few days longer. Then he took out his pipe, and, filling it carefully, broke off a sulphur match from the block in his pocket. He felt that this was an extravagance, but he was in need just then of consolation. He had wandered up on the mountain, past the reservoir and the M'Gill University, after a singularly discouraging afternoon, to wait until supper should be ready at his boarding-house.

One or two groups of loungers, young men and daintily dressed women, strolled by; and then he started suddenly at the sound of a voice that sent a thrill through him. He would have recognized it and the laugh that followed it, anywhere. He sprang to his feet as a group of three people came out from a winding path among the trees. For a moment or two a wholly absurd and illogical impulse almost impelled him to bolt. He knew it was quite unreasonable, especially as he had thought of the girl every day since he had last seen her; but he remembered that she was a rich man's daughter and he a wandering packer of no account, with an apparently unrealizable project in his mind, and in his pocket no more money than would last a week. While he hesitated, she saw him. He stood perfectly still, perhaps a little straighter than was absolutely necessary, and not looking directly toward her. If she preferred to go by without noticing him, he meant to afford her the opportunity.

She turned toward her father and said something that Weston could not hear, but he felt his heart beat almost unpleasantly fast when, a moment later, she moved on quietly straight toward him. She looked what she was, a lady of station, and her companion's attire suggested the same thing, while, though Weston now wore city clothes, he was morbidly afraid that the stamp of defeat and failure was upon him. Much as he had longed for her it would almost have been a relief to him if she had passed. Ida, however, did nothing of the kind. She stopped and held out her hand while she looked at him with gracious composure. It was impossible for him to know that this had cost her a certain effort.

"Where have you come from? We certainly didn't expect to see you here," she said.

"From Winnipeg. That is, immediately," said Weston, and added, "I hired out to bring a draft of cattle."

Ida, who was quite aware that the tending of cattle on trains was not a well-paid occupation, and was usually adopted only by those who desired to save the cost of a ticket, fancied that she understood why he mentioned this, and was not sure that she was pleased. It was, as she recognized, the man's unreasonable pride which impelled him to thrust facts of that kind into the foreground. Just then, however, her father, who had waited a moment or two, stepped forward and shook hands with him.

"Where are you staying in the city?" he asked.

"At Lemoine's boarding-house," answered Weston, mentioning a street in the French Canadian quarter, from which any one acquainted with the locality could deduce that he found it desirable to study economy.

"Doing anything here?" asked Stirling.

Weston said that he had some mining business in hand; and he looked down at his clothes, when Stirling 'suggested that he should come' home with them to supper, though, from his previous acquaintance with the man, he was not astonished at the invitation. Stirling laughed.

"That's quite right," he said. "We call it supper, and that's how I dress. I don't worry about the little men when I bring them along, and the big ones don't mind."

Weston glanced at Ida, and when he saw that she seconded the invitation, he said that he would run around to his boarding-house first to see whether there were any letters or messages for him. Stirling made a sign of comprehension, for this was a thing he could understand. There had been a time when he had watched and waited for the commissions which very seldom came.

"Then you can come straight across as soon as you have called there," said Ida.

She presented him to her companion, who, it appeared, came from Toronto; and then she explained that they had climbed the mountain so that her friend might see the surroundings of the city. They walked back together until they reached a spot where two roads led downhill, and Weston left them.

It was some little time later when he reached Stirling's house, and was left to wait a few minutes in a very artistically-furnished room. Its floor was of polished parquetry with a few fine skins from British Columbia spread upon it here and there, and the dainty, spindle-legged chairs, the little tables, the cabinets and the Watteau figures were, he fancied, either of old French manufacture or excellent copies. The big basement heater had apparently been extinguished, but a snapping wood-fire blazed upon the English pattern hearth, and, for the light was fading outside, it flung an uncertain, flickering radiance about the room. Weston, sitting down, contrasted its luxury with the grim bareness of his match-boarded cubicle in the boarding-house, and with the log shanties of the railroad and logging camps. He frowned as he did so, for all that his eyes rested on made unpleasantly plain the distinction between himself and the girl whose room it evidently was.

Then he rose as she came in, attired in a long, trailing dress that rustled as she moved. It seemed to become her wonderfully, and he became conscious of a faint embarrassment. He had not seen her dressed in that fashion before, and, after the years that he had spent in lonely bush and noisy railroad camp, her beauty and daintiness had an almost disconcerting effect on him. She drew a low chair a little nearer the hearth, and, sinking into it, motioned to him to be seated.

"My father is busy, and Nellie Farquhar will not be down for a little while," she said. "We shall probably have half an hour to ourselves, and I want you to tell me all that you have been doing since we left you."

Weston understood that she meant to resume their acquaintance—though he was not sure that was quite the correct word for it—at the point at which it had been broken off, and he was rather glad that she asked him what he had been doing. It was a safe topic and naturally one on which he could converse, and he felt that any silence or sign of constraint would have been inadmissible.

"Oh," he said, "we went up to look for the mine again."

"You were not successful?"

"No," said Weston. "It was winter, and we had rather a rough time in the ranges. In fact, I got one foot frost-bitten, and was lame for some while afterward. It was the one I cut, which probably made it more susceptible."

His face hardened a trifle as he recalled the agony of the march back through the snowy wilderness, and the weeks he had afterward spent, unable to set his foot to the ground, in the comfortless log hotel of a little desolate settlement.

"Wasn't it rather foolish to go up into the ranges in winter?" Ida asked.

"It was," admitted Weston, with a faint, dry smile. "Still, you see, I couldn't stay away. The thing has become an obsession."

Ida fancied that she understood. He had on several occasions revealed to her his stubborn pride, and she knew that, whatever he thought of her, he would keep it to himself unless he found that mine. She also had some idea of what one would have to face floundering over the snow-barred passes into the great desolation in winter time.

"Well," she asked quietly, "what did you do then?"

"We worked in a logging camp until spring, and then I went down to Vancouver to raise money for the next campaign. Nobody seemed inclined to let me have any, for which one couldn't very well blame them. After all," and Weston laughed softly, "the thing looks uncommonly crazy. Later on, we got a pass to do some track-grading back east, on one of the prairie lines, and when we'd saved a few dollars I started to try my luck in Montreal."

Ida said nothing for a few moments. She could fill in most of what he left untold, and it seemed to her that one who knew how men lived in the lonely logging camps through the iron winter, or drove the new track across the prairie through the thaw slush in spring, could make an epic of such a theme. It was toil that taxed man's utmost strength of body and mind, under the Arctic frost, and, what was even worse to bear, in half-thawed mire. She had once seen the track-graders trooping back, wet to the skin, worn out, and clogged with soil to the knees, to the reeking shanty which was filled with the foul steam of drying clothes. As the result of it all, Weston had, perhaps, saved less money than she often spent on one gown. She felt very compassionate toward him, and he was troubled by the softness in her eyes. He felt that if he watched her too closely he might lose his head.

"I tried to study a few works on trigonometry and surveying during the winter, but it was a little difficult," he said. "For one thing, if you sat near the stove in the logging shack the light was dim, and you couldn't very well read anywhere else in the frost we had. Besides that, the boys generally insisted on everybody's playing cards, and if any one refused they had a playful trick of throwing things at him."

The girl, who had imagination, could picture the dimly-lighted shanty and the bronzed and ragged men flinging their long boots, as well as very pointed badinage, at the comrade who tried to read. It would, she admitted, certainly be a little difficult to study trigonometry in such surroundings.

"You see, I wanted to go into the thing systematically," continued Weston, who felt that he was safest when he kept on talking. "We have decided that Verneille couldn't have made more than forty miles from the lake, and, as he was heading south, that gives us at most a sweep of about a hundred and twenty miles to search, though the whole of it is practically a nest of mountains. As I wasn't able to read up the subject quite as much as I should have liked, we have thought of hiring a professional surveyor and raising money enough to spend the whole summer over the thing, even if we have to let the men who help us take a share in the mine."

"I wonder whether you would be very much offended if some of your friends were to offer to bear part of the expense?" Ida asked quietly.

"I'm afraid I couldn't permit it." The man's face flushed. "They probably would never get their money back. After all, it's only a wild-cat scheme."

"That doesn't sound very convincing," said Ida. "Haven't you another reason?"

She had expected to find the suggestion useless when she made it, for she understood his attitude. He would not take her money, and that, of course, was in one respect just as she would have had it; but, on the other hand, there were so many difficulties, and probably hazards, that she could save him.

"Well," he said quietly, "it's the only reason I can offer."

There was silence for almost half a minute, and Ida felt that it was becoming singularly uncomfortable. So much could have been said by both of them that their conversation up to this point had suggested to her the crossing of a river on very thin ice. On the surface it was smooth, but the stream ran strong below, and there was the possibility that at any moment one of them might plunge through. Pride forbade her making any deliberate attempt to break the ice, but she would not have been very sorry had it suddenly given way. The man evidently was holding himself in hand, and she felt that she must emulate his reticence. She clung to the safe topic, in which she really was interested, as he had done.

"Won't you go on?" she asked. "You were not successful in Vancouver, and you tried to raise the money in Montreal. It's a little difficult, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes," said Weston, laughing, "as I'm situated, it certainly is. Of course, a good deal depends on how you set about this kind of thing, and the correct way would have been to come in on a Pullman instead of a cattle-car, and then engage a suite of rooms at the biggest hotel. Financiers and company jobbers seem rather shy of a man who gives Lemoine's boarding-house as his address, and some of them are not quite civil when they hear what he has to say to them. In fact, I'm afraid that I shall have to give them up in a day or two."

It was evident that he took his defeat quietly; but Ida thought that she knew what that quietness cost.

"How are you going to get back?" she asked.

She felt that it was rather a cruel question, for this was not the man to give up while he had a dollar in hand, and she was sure that he was going back to search for the mine again. Still, in one respect, she was a little vexed with him. His self-control was excellent, but there was rather too much of it.

"That," he said, with a whimsical twinkle in his eyes, "is a point that will require rather careful consideration."

Ida liked his smile, but the desire to startle him out of his reticence in one way or another became suddenly irresistible, and she changed the subject abruptly.

"I told you I was going to England," she said. "I wonder whether you would be surprised to hear that I spent a month or two at Scarthwaite Hall?"

Weston did not seem exactly astonished, but he was clearly disconcerted and off his guard.

"I heard that you did," he said.

"Then you know that I met your father and sister and didn't keep my promise, or, at least, that I didn't do what you wanted me to?"

"Yes," said Weston simply.

His quietness was too obvious, and she felt that it covered a good deal.

"One of them wrote you?" she asked.

"Yes," admitted Weston, "my father indulged in a few reproaches. He didn't seem to like the notion of my having served as your camp-packer. After that, you were in London?"

He was at fault on two points, for, though compelled to answer her, he should not have volunteered any information as to what was in the letter, nor should he have attempted to change the subject, for this made it clear to Ida that things had been said which he did not wish her to suspect. There would, of course, be reproaches, but it seemed probable that there would be a word or two of half-contemptuous advice as well, and she felt reasonably sure what this would be. Weston of Scarthwaite had, no doubt, suggested that the man of whom she had spoken so favorably would be a fool if he did not marry her. A trace of color crept into her face, and, seeing that there was a certain diffidence in her companion's manner, she felt that she hated Weston of Scarthwaite. It was, however, evident that silence would be too suggestive just then.

"I didn't make a promise, after all," she said. "Are you afraid that I gave your people a wrong impression about you?"

"No," replied Weston quietly, looking her in the eyes. "I know you would say nothing that was not kind of me. Still, the only thing that would affect my people would be the fact that I haven't succeeded at anything yet." He smiled rather grimly. "I'm not sure it wouldn't please them, in a way. You see, they probably expected it."

On the whole, both of them were glad that Miss Farquhar came in just then; and in a few more minutes Stirling appeared, and they went in to dinner. It was not a very elaborate meal, for the contractor, who had once toiled much as Weston had done, was, like a good many others of his kind, in some respects a simple and frugal man. Still, when Ida and Miss Farquhar left them, he laid a cigar-box on the table and filled Weston's glass with wine.

"Now," he said, "if you have no objections, you can tell me what you're doing in Montreal."

Weston supplied him with a brief account of his business, and Stirling, who asked one or two very shrewd questions, sat apparently reflecting for a minute or two.

"You struck nobody in Vancouver who seemed inclined to take a hand in it?"

"Only one concern, and they seemed very doubtful. Anyway, their terms were practically prohibitive."

"Grafton?"

"No. Norris & Lander."

"Well," said Stirling, "before you could expect to do anything here, you'd want to locate the reef and get some big mining man to visit it and give you a certificate that it was a promising property. If you had that, and a bag of specimens of high-grade milling ore, people would listen to you."

"The trouble is that I can't get them."

"Then," observed Stirling, "I guess you'll have to fall back on your friends."

"I'm afraid that none of my friends have any money to invest; and, in any case, I'd rather deal with strangers," said Weston.

His host glanced at him very keenly.

"Seems to me you have got to let the thing go," he said.

"No," declared Weston. "In some respects, it's a crazy project; but I'm going on."

Stirling quietly turned the conversation into another channel, but when Western took his departure he called up his secretary on the telephone.

"I want you to write Norris & Lander, Vancouver, the first thing in the morning, and get it off by the Pacific express," he said. "Tell them they can let a young man named Weston, with whom they've been in communication, have the money he asks for, to count as stock when he starts his company, at the biggest discount they can get. They can charge me usual brokerage, but they're to keep my name out of it."

The secretary said it should be done, and Stirling sat down to his cigar with a smile. He was inclined to fancy that Weston would find Norris & Lander much more amenable after that. It was an hour later when Ida came into the room, and he looked at her thoughtfully.

"There's some grit in that young man, and I guess it's just as well," he observed. "He's up against quite a big proposition."

He saw the faint gleam in Ida's eyes.

"If he has taken hold, I think he will put it through," she said.

She turned away the next moment, and moved a glass on the table; but, when she looked around again, she saw Stirling's smile.

"Well," he said, "considering everything, it's quite likely."

After this, he carefully picked out another cigar, and Ida left him, wondering what he could have meant.



CHAPTER XXI

THE BRULEE

Stirling, who hitherto, like a wise man, had carefully avoided wild-cat mining schemes, and, indeed, ventures of any kind outside his own profession, had for once thrust his prudence into the background and done what he could to further Weston's project, for a reason which he would not have admitted to anybody else. He was not famous as a charitable person, but he had, for all that, unobtrusively held out a helping hand to a good many struggling men in need of it during his career, and there were now certain conjectures and suspicions lying half-formulated at the back of his mind. He had acted on them with the impulsive promptness which usually characterized him, and it was not his fault that his efforts proved fruitless, for Weston, as it happened, neither revisited Vancouver nor communicated with Norris & Lander.

A week after he left Montreal, Weston met Grenfell in a little British Columbian settlement shut in by towering ranges and leagues of shadowy bush, where they were fortunate enough to find a storekeeper who seemed inclined to place more credence in their story than any of the company promoters had done. What was more to the purpose, he offered to provide them with a horse, camp-gear and provisions, in exchange for a certain share in the mine should their search prove successful. The share was rather a large one, but, as the man pointed out, it was very probable that they might not strike the lode at all. They also made the acquaintance of a young surveyor who had set up in the wooden settlement several months earlier and had done very little business since. He was quite willing to give them the benefit of his professional services on somewhat similar terms to those the storekeeper had made.

The result of this was that early one morning they set out once more on the gold trail. When they made their first camp at sunset in a grove of towering pines they held a council. It was almost dark amidst the serried rows of tremendous trunks, but the light of the snapping fire fell upon their faces, which were all a trifle grave. In the case of two of the party, at least, their faces were stamped with a certain quiet resolution and a hint of the forcefulness which comes of rigid and continuous self-denial. Men discover in the bush that abstention from most of the little comforts and amenities of life not infrequently tends to vigor of body and clarity of mind. This, however, is a fact that has been accepted long ago, for it is not, as a rule, the full-fleshed, self-indulgent man who does anything worth while. Their skin was clear and bronzed, their nerves steady, and, though Grenfell differed from them in these respects, their eyes were very keen, with a snap in the depths of them. They were eyes that could look peril and defeat squarely in the face without flinching.

Devine, the young surveyor, laughed as he flung his empty enameled plate aside.

"It's quite a long time since I had a meal of that kind," he said. "After all, there is a certain satisfaction in the feeling that you couldn't eat very much more even if you had it, though that's an opportunity to which I've not been accustomed lately. I've made my supper rather frequently on half of a stale flapjack, and had the other half for breakfast the next day. Having admitted that, suppose we turn our attention to the proposition in front of us. You were heading south when you separated from Verneille, Grenfell?"

"About south. I can't be sure."

"That," observed the surveyor, "may mean anything between southeast and southwest; and if we take the spot where you found your partner afterward, and make a sweep with a forty-mile radius, which is what we've concluded was the distance he probably covered, it gives us quite a big tract of country to search. Still, we ought to find a lake that's a mile or two across."

Weston laughed softly.

"It's my third attempt, and I don't know how often Grenfell has tried. One could almost fancy that the lake has vanished. That sounds a little absurd, doesn't it?"

"Well," said Devine, with an air of reflection, "we won't admit that it's an impossibility. If you can take that for granted, it simplifies the thing."

Grenfell, who lay with his back against a fir trunk, roused himself suddenly.

"I never thought of it in that way," he said. "Still, lakes as big as that one don't vanish."

"Anyway, mines seem to do so. The woods are full of them, if all one hears is true."

"It isn't," said Weston dryly, "though I've no doubt there are a few lost mines. Are you sure you haven't done a crazy thing in joining us in the hunt for this one? Of course, I've tried to put that aspect of the matter squarely before you already."

Devine, who was a young man, flushed slightly.

"The cold fact is that I was only afraid you wouldn't take me. It's a big inducement to know that one has a reasonable supply of provisions in hand."

"You've evidently been up against it, like the rest of us," Grenfell suggested.

"I've lived for three months on the proceeds of the only job I got; and it's quite likely I shouldn't have held out if I hadn't been broken into the thing while I got through with my studies in Toronto. I don't quite know now how I did that, but I had to hire out between whiles, teaming and dredging up building stone from the lake, to make my fees, and now and then I lived on one meal a day to spin out the money. It would have been easier at the settlement, but I had a lesson soon after I put up my sign. Two city men sent up by a syndicate to look for a pulp-mill site and timber rights came along one hot day and found me splitting cedar shingles, with mighty few clothes on. The result was that while I might have made a small pile of money out of them, they sent back to Vancouver for another man and paid him twice as much, though they didn't locate the mill. I felt I had to tell you this."

It was not at all an uncommon story in that country, and when Weston looked at Grenfell with a smile, the latter waved his hand.

"Oh," he said, "we're a most worshipful company of broken deadbeats, fed on credit, and out on a forlorn hope; but it seems to me that the storekeeper who supplied us with provisions is the craziest of all the crowd."

"It was the broken men who made this country," said Devine.

There was a certain truth in this observation, as the rest of them knew, for, after all, it was the outcast and the desperate who first pushed grimly on into the wilderness, up tremendous defiles and over passes choked with snow, and afterward played a leading part in the Titanic struggle with nature in the strongholds where she had ruled supreme. The wilderness is merciless; the beaten men died, but the rest held on, indomitable; and now those who from the security of a railroad observation-car gaze upon orchard and oat-field, awful gorge and roaring torrent, can dimly realize what the making of that province cost the pioneers who marched into it with famine-worn faces and bleeding feet. That the valor of that army has not yet abated all are sure who know what the vanguard of the last host had to face on the trail to Klondyke a few years ago.

It is unpleasant to sleep in half-thawed slush around a sulky fire, or to grip canoe pole or paddle until one's swollen fingers will not straighten and the palms are raw. There is an exhilaration in plunging down a roaring rapid through a haze of spray, but it loses something of its charm when each movement required to keep the canoe straight causes the man who holds the paddle agony from the wounds the floor of the craft has rubbed on his knees; and a portage through tangled brushwood and over slippery rock around a fall forms a tolerably arduous task when he is stiff from constant immersion in very cold water and has had little to eat for a week or so. It is a little difficult to convey a clear impression of the sensation experienced during the execution of these and similar tasks, though they are undertaken somewhat frequently in that country, and, as it happens, the men most qualified to speak are not as a rule gifted with descriptive powers.

In any case, nobody answered Devine, and instead of moralizing they presently went to sleep. They were up at sunrise the next day, and started soon afterward on a march that led them through tangled pine bush, the tall grass of natural swamp prairies, rotting muskegs, and over stony hill-slopes. It was repeated with no great variation for several weeks, except that now and then they swam or ferried themselves on logs over very cold and rapid rivers. Still, thanks to the surveyor's professional skill, they were quartering the country systematically, and, though now and then they had to leave the horse at a base camp under Grenfell's charge, they had to grapple with no insuperable difficulty.