“And now I’ve told ye that,” said Bates, “I’ll tell ye something else, for it’s right ye should know that when the spring comes it’ll not be in my power to help ye with the logs—­not if we should lose the flood and have to let ’em lie till next year—­for when the snow passes, I must be on the hills seeking her.” (He had put a brown, bony hand to shade his eyes, and from out its shade he looked.) “There were many to help me seek her alive; I’ll take none wi’ me when I go to give her burial.”

The other saddened; The weary length and uncertainty of such a search, and its dismal purpose, came to him.

“You’ve no assurance that she hasn’t drowned herself in the lake here,” he cried, remonstrating.

“But I have that; and as ye’ll be naturally concerned at me leaving the logs, I’ll tell ye what it is, if ye’ll give me your word as an honest man that ye’ll not repeat it at any time or place whatsoever.”

He looked so like a man seeking courage to confess some secret sin that Trenholme drew back.

“I’ll not tell, but—­”

Bates took no heed.  “My aunt,” he began, “had money laid by; she had ten English sovereigns she liked to keep by her—­women often do.  There was no one but me and Sissy knew where it was; and she took them with her.  By that I know she was making for the railway, and—­” His voice grew unsteady as he brought his hand down; there was a look of far-off vision in his eyes, as though he saw the thing of which he spoke.  “Ay, she’s lying now somewhere on the hills, where she would be beaten down by the snow before she reached a road.”

Trenholme was thinking of the sadness of it all, forgetting to wonder even why he had been told not to repeat this last, when he found Bates was regarding his silence with angry suspicion.

“It wasn’t stealing,” he said irritably; “she knew she might have them if she wanted.”  It was as though he were giving a shuffling excuse for some fault of his own and felt its weakness.

The young man, taken by surprise, said mechanically, “Would Miss Bates have given them to her?” He had fallen into the habit of referring to the childish old woman with, all due form, for he saw Bates liked it.

“Hoots!  What are you saying, man?  Would ye have had the lassie leave the burden on my mind that she’d gone out of her father’s house penniless?  ’Twas the one kindness she did me to take the gold.”

CHAPTER VI.

One evening Alec Trenholme sat down to write to his brother.  Bates had urged him to write, and, after a due interval, of his own accord he wrote.  The urging and the writing had a certain relation of cause and effect, but the writer did not think so.  Also, the letter he wrote was very different from the document of penitence and recantation that Bates had advised, and now supposed him to be writing.

He gave a brief account of what he had done before he accepted the post of station-master at Turrifs Station, and then,