he flag station to ask about the
train.

It stopped for him an hour later and he set off again on his search for
Daly, which was complicated by the need for being on his guard against
a man he did not know. It looked as if Walters had told Daly that
Lawrence was in British Columbia, and he had come out to join his
accomplice; but, after all, if Foster did not know Walters, the man did
not know him. Another thought gave him some comfort: Walters had
plotted against Lawrence because his evidence might be dangerous, but
probably knew nothing about Daly's blackmailing plan. The latter
would, no doubt, consider any money he could extort was his private
perquisite, and might try to protect his victim for a time.

As the train sped through the mountains Foster felt very much at a
loss. Indeed, unless luck favored him, he thought he might as well
give up the search, and by and by got off at a mining town. He had no
particular reason for doing so, but felt that to go on to Vancouver
would be to leave the place where his last clew broke off too far away.

The town, for the most part, was built of wood, and some of the smaller
and older houses of logs, with ugly square fronts that hid the roof. A
high, plank sidewalk ran down the main street, so that foot passengers
might avoid the mud, but the ruts and holes were now hidden by beaten
snow. At one end stood a big smelter, which filled the place with
acrid fumes, and the scream of saws rose from sheds beside the river,
where rusty iron smoke-stacks towered above sawdust dumps. The green
torrent was partly covered by cakes of grinding ice. All round, in
marked contrast to the utilitarian ugliness below, dark pines ran up to
the glittering snowfields on the shoulders of the peaks. Foster went
to a big new hotel, which he found dirty and too hot. Its bare walls
were cracked and exuded resin; black drops from the central heater
pipes stained the rotunda floor, which was torn by the spikes on the
river-Jacks' boots. An electric elevator made a horrible noise. The
supper he got in the big dining-room, where an electric organ played,
was, however, very good, and he afterwards sat rather drearily in the
rotunda, watching the men who came in and out through the revolving
door.

There is not much domestic life in the new Western towns, whose
inhabitants, for the most part, live at hotels, and the rotundas of the
latter are used as a lounge by anybody who prefers them to the