“Oh, really?  Why defer mere thanks indefinitely?”

“It won’t be indefinitely, and besides, thanks will keep—­and breakfast won’t.”

He entered the house, with Beth and her maid humbly trailing at his heels.  Mrs. Dick came bustling from the kitchen like a busy little ant.  Van introduced his charges briefly.  Mrs. Dick shook hands with them both.

“Well!” she said, “I like you after all!  And it’s lucky I do, for if I didn’t I don’t know’s I should take you or not, even if Van did say I had to.”

Van took her by the shoulders and shook her boyishly.

“You’d take a stick of dynamite and a house afire, both in one hand, if I said so,” he announced.  “Now don’t get hostile.”

“Well—­I s’pose I would,” agreed Mrs. Dick.  She added to Beth:  “Ain’t he the dickens and all?  Just regular brute strength.  Come right upstairs till I show you where you’re put.  I’ve turned off two men to let you have the best room in the house.”

Beth had to smile.  She had never felt so helpless in her life—­or so amused.  She followed Mrs. Dick obediently, finding the two-bed room above to be a bright, new-smelling apartment of acceptable size and situation.  In answer to a score of rapid-fire questions on the part of Mrs. Dick, she imparted as much as Van already knew concerning herself and her quest.

Mrs. Dick became her friend forthwith, then hastened downstairs to the kitchen.  Van and Beth presently took breakfast together, while Elsa, with a borrowed needle and thread, was busied with some minor repairing of garments roughly used the day before.  Other boarders and lodgers of the house had already eaten and gone, to resume their swirl in the maelstrom of the camp.

For a time the two thus left alone in the dining-room appeased their appetites in silence.  Van watched the face of the girl for a time and finally spoke.

“I’ll let you know whatever I hear about your brother, if there is any more to hear.  Meantime you’ll have to remain here and wait.”

She was silent for a moment, reflecting on, the situation.

“You took my suitcase away from Mr. Bostwick, you’ll remember,” she said, “and left it where we got the horses.”

“It will be here to-day,” he answered.  “I arranged for that with Dave.”

“Oh.  But of course you cannot tell when Mr. Bostwick may appear.”

“His movements couldn’t be arranged so conveniently, otherwise he wouldn’t appear at all.”

She glanced at him, startled.

“Not come at all?  But I need him!  Besides, he’s my——­ I expect him to go and find my brother.  And the trunk checks are all in his pocket—­wait!—­no they’re not, they’re in my suitcase after all.”

“You’re in luck,” he assured her blandly, “for Searle has doubtless lost all his pockets.”

“Lost his pockets?” she echoed.  “Perhaps you mean the convicts took them—­took his clothing—­everything he had.”