ticular tenderness for the unfortunate lad.

"Well," he said, "perhaps he took it in the first place for the mere
beauty of it, and it afterwards became a companion--something that
connected him with the Old Country. It appealed in one of those ways to
me."

Again she flashed a sharp glance at him, but he went on unheeding:

"When I found it I meant to keep it merely as a clew, and so that it
could be given up to his relatives some day," he added. "Then I fell
into the habit of looking at it in my lonely camp in the bush at night,
and when I sat beside the stove while the snow lay deep upon the
prairie. There was something in your eyes that seemed to encourage me."

"To encourage you?"

"Yes," Wyllard assented gravely, "I think that expresses it. When I
camped in the bush of the Pacific slope we were either out on the gold
trail--and we generally came back ragged and unsuccessful after spending
several months' wages which we could badly spare--or I was going from
one wooden town to another without a dollar in my pocket and wondering
how I was to obtain one when I got there. For a time it wasn't much more
cheerful on the prairie. Twice in succession the harvest failed. Perhaps
Lance Radcliffe felt as I did."

The girl cut him short. "Why didn't you mention the photograph at once?"

Wyllard smiled at her. "Oh," he explained, "I didn't want to be
precipitate--you English folk don't seem to like that. I think"--and he
seemed to consider--"I wanted to make sure you wouldn't be repelled by
what might look like Colonial _brusquerie_. You see, you have been over
snow-barred divides and through great shadowy forests with me. We've
camped among the boulders by lonely lakes, and gone down frothing
rapids. I felt--I can't tell you why--that I was bound to meet you some
day."

His frankness was startling, but the girl showed neither astonishment
nor resentment. She felt certain that this stranger was not posing or
speaking for effect. It did not occur to Wyllard that he might have gone
too far, and for a moment or two he leaned against the gate, while she
looked at him with what he thought of as her gracious English calm.

Pale sunshine fell upon them, though the larches beside the road were
rustling beneath a cold wind, and the song of the river came up brokenly
out of the valley. An odor of fresh grass floated about them, and the
dry, cold smell of the English spring was in the air. Across the valley
dim ghosts of hills