haps fame in England, for he knew he
had some talent and he was ambitious. Instead he had chosen exhausting
labor and stern self-denial in the wilds. The life had some
compensations, but they were not very obvious then. It was, however, too
late for regrets; he had chosen and must be content, and putting down
the newspaper he was trying to read, he went to bed.

Two days later he sat in the garden of a new summer hotel on the shore
of Lake Huron. A pine forest rolled down to the water past the pretty
wooden building, and the air in the shade was cool and sweet with
resinous smells. The lake glittered, smooth as glass, in the hot sun,
but here and there a wandering breeze traced a dark-blue line across
the placid surface. Along the beach the shadows of the pines floated
motionless.

Thirlwell smoked and meditated on the errand that had brought him to the
hotel. The clerk had told him that Miss Strange was on the beach, but he
had not seen her yet and felt some curiosity about the girl whom he had
arranged to meet. They had corresponded and he had brought a photograph
he thought she would like to see, but on the whole he would sooner she
had not asked for the interview. She might find it painful to hear the
story he had to tell, and the thing would require some tact, more
perhaps than he had.

In the meantime he wondered what she was like. Her letters indicated a
cultivated mind, and he knew she had a post at a Toronto school; but one
could not expect much from the daughter of the broken-down prospector he
had met in the North. Strange had worked spasmodically at the mine,
where he was employed because labor was scarce. He was not a good
workman, and when he had earned a small sum generally bought provisions
and went off into the bush to re-locate a silver lode he claimed to have
found when he was young. He came back ragged and disappointed, and when
liquor could be got indulged freely before he resumed his work.

Nobody believed his tale; Strange's lode was something of a joke. The
miners called him a crank, and Thirlwell had doubted if he was quite
sane, but he persisted in his search and sometimes Black Steve Driscoll
went North with him. It was suspected that Driscoll made an unlawful
profit by selling the Indians liquor, which perhaps accounted for his
journeys with Strange. As they returned from the last expedition their
canoe capsized in a rapid near the mining camp, and although Driscoll
reached land exhausted