“Yes,” said the stranger, smiling.  “That’s me.”

Deringham made no comment, but laid the card down beside him.  “I wonder,” he said indifferently, “how you came to know me.”

The chilling evenness of his voice seemed to irritate the other man, and Alice Deringham was conscious of a faint amusement as she glanced at them.  Deringham in his tweed travelling attire, which, worn with apparent carelessness, seemed to hang with every fold just where it should be, was wholly at his ease, and there was a trace of half-expressed toleration in his thin, finely-cut face, while Hallam appeared to become coarse and embarrassed by comparison.  He probably did not feel so, for diffidence of any kind is not common in the West, but he may have realized that in any delicate fencing the advantage would lie with Deringham.  Both, producing nothing and living upon the toil of their fellows, played the same game, but, while the stakes and counters are very similar, one played it in Vancouver and the other in London, where a more subtle finesse is demanded from the players.

Hallam, however, smiled.  “I don’t know that you will be pleased when I tell you, but this should explain things,” he said.  “Of course, since your company took hold out here I have heard of you.”

Deringham took the Colonial Journal handed him, glanced down a paragraph, and passed it to his daughter.  “Your maid!” he said.  “I fancied it was a mistake to part with her, my dear.  It is evident she has not gone home.”

Alice Deringham unconsciously drew herself up a trifle, as her eyes ran down the column.  It was headed “Another missing heir,” and ran:  “We are getting used to having our railroad-shovelling and trail-cutting done by scions of the British aristocracy, and seldom ask them what they did in the old country so long as they behave themselves decently in this one.  Twice recently, as mentioned in these columns, the successor to an English property of some value was discovered, in the one case peddling oranges, and in the other digging a rancher’s ditches, while now we have another instance in the Somasco valley.  It appears that long ago there was a family quarrel at Carnaby, England, and though we do not know what it was all about, the owner of what we understand is an encumbered estate turned out his son, who had the good sense to come out to this country, where he did pretty well.  He died and left a son, Mr. Henry Alton, well known in the Somasco district, who appears to be a credit to the country which took his father in.  The owner of Carnaby dying later, left the ancestral property to him, and, as in this case there does not seem to be a wicked uncle, Mr. Deringham, the next of kin and a distinguished London financier who has, we believe, had some dealings in local mines, has come out to look for him.  Mr. Alton of Somasco will probably stop right where he is if he is the sensible man his neighbours seem to think him.”