ss, badly startled the agent of an A.C.C.
factory when he appeared, ragged, haggard, and wet with rain, in the
doorway of a big, stove-warmed room.

The agent, however, was out for business, but when Wyllard produced a
wad of paper money stained by wet and perspiration he appeared quite
willing to part with certain provisions. He was told that no questions
would be answered, and when he had given his visitor supper, Wyllard
sculled away in the darkness leaving him none the wiser. Half an hour
later the schooner slipped out to sea again.

The rest was by comparison easy. They had the coast of Alaska and
British Columbia close aboard, and they crept southwards in fine
weather, once running off their course when the smoke of a steamer crept
up above the horizon. In a strong breeze, they ran for the northern
tongue of Vancouver Island, and Wyllard, who had already decided that
the vessel would fetch scarcely five hundred dollars, and that it would
be better if all trace of her disappeared, pulled his wheel over
suddenly as she was scraping by a surf-swept reef.

In another minute she was on hard and fast, and they had scarcely got
the boat over when the masts went with a crash. A quarter of an hour
later the wreckage was thrown up on the beach, and, before they set out
on a long march through the bush, there was very little to be seen of
the vessel.

Three or four days afterward they reached a little wooden town, and
Wyllard, who slipped into it alone in the dusk, bought clothing for
himself and his companions, who put it on in the bush. Then they went
into the town together, and slept that night in a hotel.

Their troubles were over, and, what was more, Wyllard, who pledged the
rest to secrecy, fancied that what had become of the schooner would
remain a mystery.

CHAPTER XXXI

WYLLARD COMES HOME

Harvest had commenced at the Range, and the clashing binders were moving
through the grain when Hawtrey sat one afternoon in Wyllard's room. It
was about five o'clock, and every man belonging to the homestead was
toiling, bare-armed and grimed with dust, among the yellow oats, but
Hawtrey sat at a table gazing with a troubled face at the litter of
papers in front of him. He wore a white shirt and store clothes, which
was distinctly unusual in case of a Western farmer at harvest time, and
Edmonds, the mortgage-jobber, leaned back in a big chair quietly
watching him.

Edmonds had called at a singularly inconvenie