“I was told that about the last place I was in, and the place before too,” Trenholme laughed.  He did not seem to take his own words much to heart.

“Well, the station certainly wasn’t much of a business,” assented Bates; “and, if it’s not rude to ask, where were ye before?”

“Before that—­why, I was just going to follow my own trade in a place where there was a splendid opening for me; but my own brother put a stop to that.  He said it was no fit position for a young man like me.  My brother’s a fine fellow,” the young man sneered, but not bitterly.

“He ought to be,” said Bates, surveying the sample of the family before him rather with a glance of just criticism than of admiration.  “What’s your calling, then?”

Alec pulled his mitts out of his pocket and slapped his moccasins with them to strike off the melting snow.  “What do you think it is, now?”

Bates eyed him with some interest in the challenge.  “I don’t know,” he said at last.  “Why didn’t your brother want ye to do it?”

“’Twasn’t grand enough.  I came out naturally thinking I’d set up near my brother; but, well, I found he’d grown a very fine gentleman—­all honour to him for it!  He’s a good fellow.”  There was no sneer just now.

Bates sat subjecting all he knew of Alec to a process of consideration.  The result was not a guess; it was not in him to hazard anything, even a guess.

“What does your brother do?”

“Clergyman, and he has a school.”

“Where?”

“Chellaston, on the Grand Trunk.”

“Never heard of it.  Is it a growing place?”

“It’s thriving along now.  It was just right for my business.”

“Did the clergyman think your business was wrong?”

The young man laughed as a man laughs who knows the answer to an amusing riddle and sees his neighbour’s mental floundering.  “He admits that it’s an honest and respectable line of life.”

“Did ye give in, then?”

“I took a year to think over it.  I’m doing that now.”

“Thinking?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve not observed ye spending much time in meditation.”

The young man looked off across the basin of the frozen lake.  What is more changeful than the blue of the sky?  Today the far firmament looked opaque, an even, light blue, as if it were made of painted china.  The blue of Alec Trenholme’s eyes was very much like the sky; sometimes it was deep and dark, sometimes it was a shadowy grey, sometimes it was hard and metallic.  A woman having to deal with him would probably have imagined that something of his inward mood was to be read in these changes; but, indeed, they were owing solely to those causes which change the face of the sky—­degrees of light and the position of that light.  As for Bates, he did not even know that his companion had blue eyes; he only knew in a general way that he was a strong, good-looking fellow, whose figure, even under the bulgy shapes of multiplied garments, managed to give suggestion of that indefinite thing we call style.  He himself felt rather thinner, weaker, more rusty in knowledge of the world, more shapeless as to apparel, than he would have done had he sat alone.