“Isn’t that beside the question?” said Deringham with a trace of stiffness.

Alton took up another cigar and lighted it.  “I don’t quite know that it is,” he said.  “You see, I remember a good deal what my mother had to put up with, and it has made me kind of sorry for women who have to do without the things they have been used to.  Now Miss Deringham has had a pretty good time in the old country?”

Deringham moved his head very slightly.  “I scarcely think we need go into that, but it is incontrovertible that the loss of Carnaby would make a difference to her,” he said.

Alton sat silent a space, and then while Deringham wondered, smiled a little.  “And she might have kept it but for a very little thing that happened a month or two ago,” he said.  “If the juniper-twigs had broken it would have saved considerable trouble to everybody.  I was back there in the mountains looking for a silver lead, you see.”

“Silver mines are, I understand, not always profitable to the man who finds them, and I should have fancied you had already sufficient scope for your energies,” said Deringham dryly.

Alton laughed, but there was a trace of grimness in his voice.  “If I once get my stakes in on the lead this one’s going to be, and if I could get the dollars I could do a good deal for Somasco,” he said.  “We want roads and mills, the biggest orchard in the province, and a fruit cannery, and we’re going to have them presently.  That’s why I wanted the silver.”

“You did not find it then?” said Deringham, who was not unwilling to follow his companion from the former topic.

“No,” said Alton, “not that time, but I will by and by.  Well, there was a good deal of snow up in the ranges, and my feet got away from me one evening when we were crawling along the edge of a gully.  There was a river and big boulders some five hundred feet below, and I slipped down, clawing at the snow, until I grabbed a little bunch of juniper just on the edge.  Part of it tore up, but I got a grip of a better handful, and hung on to it, with most of me swinging over the gully.  Charley was stripping off the pack-rope on the slope above, and he was mighty quick, but I knew that bush was coming away with me, and didn’t think he could be fast enough.  I didn’t feel exactly happy, but while I’ve read that folks think of some astonishing things when they’re starting out on the long trail, it wasn’t that way with me.  I could only remember there was a man I’d never got even with who’d badly cheated me.”

[Illustration:  “There was a river and big boulders some five hundred feet below.”]

Deringham felt a little shiver run through him, for there was a grim vindictiveness in the speaker’s tone, and he felt that Alton of Somasco would not lightly forgive an injury.

“You managed to crawl up?” he said.

“No,” said Alton simply, “I didn’t.  I lay there watching Charley, and felt the bush drawing out, until the rope came down and Charley hauled me up.  It would have made a big difference to Miss Deringham if he’d been a second or two longer.  Well, we’ll have lots of time for talking, because you’re out for your health, and we’ll keep you right here until we see what Somasco can do for you, and just now I see Miss Deringham alone on the verandah.”