and sky
faded to dusky blue, but presently a faint light began to blink as if it
beckoned. The light got brighter and gradually drew abeam. The foaming
wake glimmered lividly in the dark, the beat of screws seemed quicker,
and Lister thought the ship was carried forward by a stream of tide.

Other lights began to blink. They stole out of the dark, got bright, and
vanished, and Lister, leaning on the rails, felt they called him on. One
knew them by their colors and measured flashes. They were beacons,
burning on a well-ordered plan to guide the navigator, but he did not
know the plan. In a sense, this was important, and he began to muse.

Now he would soon reach the Old Country, he felt he had made a momentous
plunge. Adventure called, he knew Canada and wanted something fresh, but
he wondered whether this was all. Perhaps the plunge had, so to speak,
not been a thoughtless caprice. In a sense, things had led up to it and
made it logical. For example, it might not have been for nothing he met
the girl on the train and got hurt. His hurt had kept him at Winnipeg
and stopping there had roused his discontent. Then he had met Vernon,
who wanted him to know the English ship-owner. It was possible these
things were like the flashes that leaped out of the dark. He would know
where they pointed when the journey was over. Then Lister smiled and
knocked out his pipe.

When he went on deck again some time afterwards the ship was steering
for a gap between two rows of twinkling lights. They ran on, closing on
each other, like electric lamps in a long street, and in front the sky
shone with a dull red glow. It was the glimmer of a great port, they
were entering the Mersey, and he went off to get up his luggage.

PART II--THE RECKONING

CHAPTER I

VERNON'S PLOT

Lister occupied the end of a slate-flag bench on the lawn at Carrock,
Mrs. Cartwright's house in Rannerdale. Rannerdale slopes to a lake in
the North Country, and the old house stands among trees and rocks in a
sheltered hollow. The sun shone on its lichened front, where a creeper
was going red; in the background birches with silver stems and leaves
like showers of gold gleamed against somber firs. Across the lawn and
winding road, the tranquil lake reflected bordering woods; and then long
mountain slopes that faded from yellow and green to purple closed the
view.

While Lister waited for the tea Mrs. Cartwright had given him to cool he
felt the charm of house a