Anderson stood up as the coroner handed him the envelope.  He took it, looked at it, and slowly put it down on the table before him.  He was perfectly composed, but there was that in his aspect which instantly hushed all sounds in the crowded room, and drew the eyes of everybody in it upon him.  The Kamloops doctor looked at him from a distance with a sudden twitching smile—­the smile of a reticent man in whom strong feeling must somehow find a physical expression.  Dixon, the young Superintendent, bent forward eagerly.  At the back of the room a group of Japanese railway workers, with their round, yellow faces and half-opened eyes stared impassively at the tall figure of the fair-haired Canadian; and through windows and doors, thrown open to the heat, shimmered lake and forest, the eternal background of Canada.

“Mr. Coroner,” said Anderson, straightening himself to his full height, “the name of the man into whose death you are inquiring is not Alexander McEwen.  He came from Scotland to Manitoba in 1869.  His real name was Robert Anderson, and I—­am his son.”

The coroner gave an involuntary “Ah!” of amazement, which was echoed, it seemed, throughout the room.

On one of the small deal tables belonging to the coffee-room, which had been pushed aside to make room for the sitting of the court, lay the newspapers of the morning—­the Vancouver Sentinel and the Montreal Star.  Both contained short and flattering articles on the important Commission entrusted to Mr. George Anderson by the Prime Minister.  “A great compliment to so young a man,” said the Star, “but one amply deserved by Mr. Anderson’s record.  We look forward on his behalf to a brilliant career, honourable both to himself and to Canada.”

Several persons had already knocked at Anderson’s door early that morning in order to congratulate him; but without finding him.  And this honoured and fortunate person—?

Men pushed each other forward in their eagerness not to lose a word, or a shade of expression on the pale face which confronted them.

Anderson, after a short pause, as though to collect himself, gave the outlines of his father’s early history, of the farm in Manitoba, the fire and its consequences, the breach between Robert Anderson and his sons.  He described the struggle of the three boys on the farm, their migration to Montreal in search of education, and his own later sojourn in the Yukon, with the evidence which had convinced him of his father’s death.

“Then, only a fortnight ago, he appeared at Laggan and made himself known to me, having followed me apparently from Winnipeg.  He seemed to be in great poverty, and in bad health.  If he had wished it, I was prepared to acknowledge him; but he seemed not to wish it; there were no doubt reasons why he preferred to keep his assumed name.  I did what I could for him, and arrangements had been made to put him with decent people at Vancouver.  But