“She’s a respectable lass,” he heard McTurpin whisper.  “Yes, it’s marry or nothing with her ... and I’m willing enough, the Lord knows.  Can ye find me a preacher, old fellow?”

He could not make out the other’s reply.  Their voices died down to an imperceptible whisper as they moved farther away.  Stanley thought they argued over something.  Then the man called Dave passed him and went swiftly up the hill.

Vaguely troubled, Stanley returned to the veranda.  It was unoccupied for chilly evening breezes had driven the loungers indoors.  Absently he paced the creaking boards and, having reached a corner of the building, continued his promenade along what seemed to be the rear of the building.  Here a line of doors opened on the veranda like the upper staterooms of a ship.

Why should he trouble his mind about McTurpin and a paramour? thought Adrian.  Yet his thought was curiously disturbed.  Something Spear had read from a letter vexed him dimly like a memory imperfectly recalled.  What was there about McTurpin and a child?  Whose child?  And what had it to do with the veiled woman who had ridden with the gambler from the mines.  Impishly the facts eluded him.  Inez would know.  But Inez must not be bothered just now—­at this time.

He paused and listened.  Was that a woman sobbing?  Of course not.  Only his nerves, his silly sentiment.  He would go home and forget the whole thing.

There it was again.  This time he could not be mistaken.  Noiselessly he made his way toward the sound.  It stopped.  But presently it came again.  From where?  Ah, yes, the window with a broken pane.

Soft, heartbroken, smothered wailing.  Spasms of it.  Then an interlude of silence.  Adrian’s heart beat rapidly.  He tip-toed to the window, tried the door beside it.  Locked.  After a moment’s hesitation he spoke, softly:  “Is someone in trouble?”

CHAPTER XX

A CALL IN THE NIGHT

There was no answer.  For a second time Adrian’s mind fought a belief that sense had tricked him.  Now and then a shout from the bar-room reached him as he waited, listening.  The wind whistled eerily through the scant-leaved scrub-oaks on the slopes above.

But from the room at the window of which he listened there came no sound.

Adrian felt like one hoaxed, made ridiculous by his own sentimentality.  He strode on.  But when he reached the farther corner some involuntary impulse turned him back.  And again the sound of muffled sobbing came to him from the open window—­fainter now, as though an effort had been made to stifle it.

Once more he spoke:  “I say, what’s the trouble in there?  Can I help?”

Almost instantly a face appeared against the pane—­a tear-stained face, terrified and shrinking.

“Oh!” said a voice unsteady with weeping.  “Oh! sir, if there is a heart in your breast you will help me to escape—­to find my father.”