“I have much less right to it than his son, and the colonial cure is not infrequently efficacious,” said Miss Barrington.  “Lance may, after all, quiet down, and he must have some good qualities.”

The Colonel’s smile was very grim.  “It is fifteen years since I saw him at Westham, and they were not much in evidence then.  I can remember two little episodes, in which he figured, with painful distinctness, and one was the hanging of a terrier which had in some way displeased him.  The beast was past assistance when I arrived on the scene, but the devilish pleasure in the lad’s face sent a chill through me.  In the other, the gardener’s lad flung a stone at a blackbird on the wall above the vinery, and Master Lance, who I fancy did not like the gardener’s lad, flung one through the glass.  Geoffrey, who was angry, but had not seen what I saw, haled the boy before him, and Lance looked him in the face and lied with the assurance of an ambassador.  The end was that the gardener who was admonished cuffed the innocent lad.  These, my dear, are somewhat instructive memories.”

“I wonder,” said Maud Barrington, glancing out across the prairie which was growing dusky now, “why you took the trouble to call them up for me?”

The Colonel smiled dryly.  “I never saw a Courthorne who could not catch a woman’s eye, or had any undue diffidence about making the most of the fact, and that is partly why they have brought so much trouble on everybody connected with them.  Further, it is unfortunate that women are not infrequently more inclined to be gracious to the sinner who repents, when it is worth his while, than they are to the honest man who has done no wrong.  Nor do I know that it is only pity which influences them.  Some of you take an exasperating delight in picturesque rascality.”

Miss Barrington laughed, and fearlessly met her uncle’s glance.  “Then you don’t believe in penitence?”

“Well,” said the Colonel dryly, “I am, I hope, a Christian man, but it would be difficult to convince me that the gambler, cattle-thief, and whisky-runner who ruined every man and woman who trusted him will be admitted to the same place as clean-lived English gentlemen.  There are, my dear, plenty of them still.”

Barrington spoke almost fiercely, and then flushed through his tan, when the girl looking into his eyes smiled a little.  “Yes,” she said, “I can believe it, because I owe a good deal to one of them.”

The ring in the girl’s voice belied the smile, and the speech was warranted, for, dogmatic, domineering, and vindictive as he was apt to be occasionally, the words he had used applied most fitly to Colonel Barrington.  His word at least had never been broken, and had he not adhered steadfastly to his own rigid code, he would have been a good deal richer man than he was then.  Nor did his little shortcomings which were burlesqued virtues, and ludicrous now and then, greatly detract from the stamp of dignity which, for speech was his worst point, sat well upon him.  He was innately conservative to the backbone, though since an ungrateful Government had slighted him, he had become an ardent Canadian, and in all political questions aggressively democratic.