“Politics?” repeated Elizabeth, wishing she might some day know what politics meant in Canada.  “You’re not married?” she added pleasantly.

“I am not married.”

“And may I ask your name?”

His name, it seemed, was George Anderson, and presently as they walked up and down he became somewhat communicative about himself, though always within the limits, as it seemed to her, of a natural dignity, which developed indeed as their acquaintance progressed.  He told her tales, especially, of his Indian journeys through the wilds about the Athabasca and Mackenzie rivers, in search of remote Indian settlements—­that the word of England to the red man might be kept; and his graphic talk called up before her the vision of a northern wilderness, even wilder and remoter than that she had just passed through, where yet the earth teemed with lakes and timber and trout-bearing streams, and where—­“we shall grow corn some day,” as he presently informed her.  “In twenty years they will have developed seed that will ripen three weeks earlier than wheat does now in Manitoba.  Then we shall settle that country—­right away!—­to the far north.”  His tone stirred and deepened.  A little while before, it had seemed to her that her tourist enthusiasm amused him.  Yet by flashes, she began to feel in him something, beside which her own raptures fell silent.  Had she, after all, hit upon a man—­a practical man—­who was yet conscious of the romance of Canada?

Presently she asked him if there was no one dependent on him—­no mother?—­or sisters?

“I have two brothers—­in the Government service at Ottawa.  I had four sisters.”

“Are they married?”

“They are dead,” he said, slowly.  “They and my mother were burnt to death.”

She exclaimed.  Her brown eyes turned upon him—­all sudden horror and compassion.

“It was a farmhouse where we were living—­and it took fire.  Mother and sisters had no time to escape.  It was early morning.  I was a boy of eighteen, and was out on the farm doing my chores.  When I saw smoke and came back, the house was a burning mass, and—­it was all over.”

“Where was your father?”

“My father is dead.”

“But he was there—­at the time of the fire?”

“Yes.  He was there.”

He had suddenly ceased to be communicative, and she instinctively asked no more questions, except as to the cause of the conflagration.

“Probably an explosion of coal-oil.  It was sometimes used to light the fire with in the morning.”

“How very, very terrible!” she said gently, after a moment, as though she felt it.  “Did you stay on at the farm?”

“I brought up my two brothers.  They were on a visit to some neighbours at the time of the fire.  We stayed on three years.”

“With your father?”

“No; we three alone.”

She felt vaguely puzzled; but before she could turn to another subject, he had added—­