nd dale was strong. Perhaps it owed something
to the play of soft light and shade, for, as a rule, in Canada all was
sharply cut. The English landscape had a strange elusive beauty that
gripped one hard, and melted as the fleecy clouds rolled by. When the
light came back color and line were as beautiful but not the same.

There was no grass in Canada like the sweep of smooth English turf, and
Lister had not thought a house could give the sense of ancient calm one
got at Carrock. Since his boyhood he had not known a home; his resting
place had been a shack at a noisy construction camp, a room at a crowded
cheap hotel, and a berth beside a steamer's rattling engines. Then the
shining silver on the tea-table was something new; he marked its beauty
of line, and the blue and gold and brown pattern on the delicate china
he was almost afraid to touch. In fact, all at Carrock was marked by a
strange refinement and quiet charm.

He liked his hosts. Mrs. Cartwright was large, rather fat, and placid,
but he felt the house and all it stood for were hers by rightful
inheritance. Her son and daughter were not like that. Lister thought
they had cultivated their well-bred serenity and by doing so had
cultivated out some virile qualities of human nature. Grace Hyslop had
beauty, but not much charm; Lister thought her cold, and imagined her
prejudices were strong and conventional. Mortimer's talk and manners
were colorlessly correct. Lister did not know yet if Hyslop was a prig
or not.

Cartwright was frankly puzzling. He looked like a sober country
gentleman, and this was not the type Lister had thought to meet. His
clothes were fastidiously good, his voice had a level, restrained note,
but his eye was like a hawk's, as Vernon had said. Now and then one saw
a twinkle of ironical amusement and some of his movements were quick and
vigorous. Lister thought Cartwright's blood was red.

Vernon, lounging at the opposite end of the bench, talked about a day
Hyslop and he had spent upon the rocks, and rather struck a foreign
note. He had not Hyslop's graceful languidness; he looked alert and
highly-strung. His thin face was too grave for Carrock and his glance
too quick. Lister, listening to his remarks, was surprised to note that
Hyslop was a bold mountaineer.

"Oh, well," he said, with a deprecatory smile, when Vernon stopped,
"this small group of mountains is all the wild belt we have got, and you
like to find a stranger keen about your