“I only know one, and it is convincing.  That Lance should have done what he is credited with doing, is quite impossible.”

Miss Barrington smiled.  “I almost believe so, too, but others of his family have done such things somewhat frequently.  Do you know that Lance has all along been a problem to me, for there is a good deal in my brother’s question.  Although it seems out of the question, I have wondered whether there could be two Lance Courthornes in Western Canada.”

The girl looked at her aunt in silence for a space, but each hid a portion of her thoughts.  Then Maud Barrington laughed.

“The Lance Courthorne now at Silverdale is as free from reproach as any man may be,” she said.  “I can’t tell you why I am sure of it—­but I know I am not mistaken.”

CHAPTER XXI

THE FACE AT THE WINDOW

It was a hot morning when Sergeant Stimson and Corporal Payne rode towards the railroad across the prairie.  The grassy levels rolled away before them, white and parched, into the blue distance, where willow grove and straggling bluff floated on the dazzling horizon, and the fibrous dust rose in little puffs beneath the horses’ feet, until Stimson pulled his beast up in the shadow of the birches by the bridge, and looked back towards Silverdale.  There, wooden homesteads girt about with barns and granaries rose from the whitened waste, and behind some of them stretched great belts of wheat.  Then the Sergeant, understanding the faith of the men who had sown that splendid grain, nodded, for he was old and wise, and had seen many adverse seasons, and the slackness that comes, when hope has gone, to beaten men.

“They will reap this year—­a handful of cents on every bushel,” he said.  “A fine gentleman is Colonel Barrington, but some of them will be thankful there’s a better head than the one he has, at Silverdale.”

“Yes, sir,” said Corporal Payne, who wore the double chevrons for the first time, and surmised that his companion’s observations were not without their purpose.

Stimson glanced at the bridge.  “Good work,” he said.  “It will save them dollars on every load they haul in.  A gambler built it!  Do they teach men to use the ax in Montana saloons?”

The corporal smiled, and waited for what he felt would come.  He was no longer the hot-blooded lad who had come out from the old country, for he had felt the bonds of discipline, and been taught restraint and silence on the lonely marches of the prairie.

“I have,” he said tentatively, “fancied there was something a little unusual about the thing.”

Stimson nodded, but his next observation was apparently quite unconnected with the topic.  “You were a raw colt when I got you, Payne, and the bit galled you now and then, but you had good hands on a bridle, and somebody who knew his business had taught you to sit a horse in the old country.  Still, you were not as handy with brush and fork at stable duty,”