Payne laughed.  “One forgets things when he is busy.  Still, you had them—­because you signed for them.”

Winston looked up suddenly, and in another moment smiled, but he was a trifle too late, for Payne had seen his astonishment, and that he was now on guard.

“Well,” he said, “I haven’t got them now.  Send me a duplicate.  You have, no doubt, some extra forms at the outpost.”

Payne decided that the man had never had the documents, but was too clever to ask any questions or offer explanations that might involve him.  It was evident he knew that somebody had personated him, and the fact sent a little thrill through the corporal; he was at least on the trail.

“I’ll bring you one round the next time I’m in the neighborhood,” he said, and Winston sat still with the spanner lying idle in his hand when he rode away.

He realized that Courthorne had taken the papers, and his face grew anxious as well as grim.  The harvest was almost ready now, and a little while would see it in.  Then his work would be over, but he had of late felt a growing fear lest something, that would prevent its accomplishment, might happen in the meanwhile.  Then almost fiercely he resumed the stripping of the machine.

An hour or two later Dane rode up, and sat still in his saddle looking down on Winston with a curious smile on his face.

“I was down at the settlement, and found a curious story going round,” he said.  “Of course, it had its humorous aspect, but I don’t know that the thing was quite discreet.  You see, Barrington has once or twice had to put a stern check on the indulgence in playfulness of that kind by some of the younger men, and you are becoming an influence at Silverdale.”

“You naturally believed what you heard.  It was in keeping with what you have seen of me?”

Dane’s eyes twinkled.  “I didn’t want to, and I must admit that it isn’t.  Still, a good many of you quiet men are addicted to occasionally astonishing your friends, and I can’t help a fancy that you could do that kind of thing as well as most folks, if it pleased you.  In fact, there was an artistic finish to the climax that suggested your usual thoroughness.”

“It did?” said Winston grimly, remembering his recent visitor and one or two of Courthorne’s Albertan escapades.  “Still, as I’m afraid I haven’t the dramatic instinct, do you mind telling me how?”

Dane laughed.  “Well, it is probable there are other men who would have kissed the girl, but I don’t know that it would have occurred to them to smash a decanter on the irate lover’s head.”

Winston felt his fingers tingle for a grip on Courthorne’s throat.  “And that’s what I’ve been doing lately?  You, of course, concluded that after conducting myself in an examplary fashion an astonishing time it was a trifling lapse?”

“Well,” said Dane dryly, “as I admitted, it appeared somewhat out of your usual line, but when I heard that a man from the settlement had been ejected with violence from your homestead, what could one believe?”