cess.

"Where does Mr. Carr live?" he asked one of these urchins when he got
near enough to have speech with him.

The youngster pointed upstream.

"First house you come to," he said. "White house with shingles painted
green. Say, mister, have you just come from the war? My dad was over
there. Do you know my dad, mister?"

The boy stood gazing at him, apparently hopeful of paternal
acquaintance, until he discovered that Thompson did not know his "dad."
Then he darted back to join his fellows at their game.

Thompson walked on. The white house with green shingles loomed up near
at hand, with a clump of flaming maples beside it. Past that stood other
houses in an orderly row facing the river, and back of them were sheds
and barns, and beyond the group of buildings spread a wide area of
cleared land with charred stumps still dotting many an acre.

He had to enter the place he took to be Sam Carr's by the back yard, so
to speak. That is, he came up from the rear, passed alongside the
house--and halted abruptly, with his foot on the first of three steps
rising to a roomy verandah.

He had not meant to eavesdrop, to listen to words not meant for his
hearing. But he had worn the common footgear of yachtsmen, a pair of
rubber-soled canvas shoes, and so had come to the verandah end unseen
and noiselessly. He was arrested there by the sight of two people and
the mention of his own name by one of them.

Sophie was sitting on the rail, looking soberly down on the glacial
gray of Toba River. There was a queer expression on her face, a mixture
of protest and resignation. Tommy Ashe stood beside her. He had
imprisoned one of her hands between his own and he was speaking rapidly,
eagerly, passionately.

Thompson had heard without meaning to hear. And what he heard, just a
detached sentence or two, shot him through with a sudden blaze of anger.
He stepped up on the floor, took quickly the three strides that
separated him from Tommy.

"You are nothing but a common liar," he challenged bluntly. "You know
you are, when you speak of me as being dead. Is that why you scuttled
out of Vancouver and hurried on here, as soon as you saw me back?"

Ashe shrank back a step. His naturally florid face grew purple. Thompson
matched him glance for glance, wondering as the moments ticked off why
Tommy glared and did not strike.

"Your heart has grown as flabby as your principles," he said at last
contemptuously.

For the instant, in ang