ad seen life in a great city and had gathered a store of
worldly wisdom, not all of which was for his good, and a repertoire
of accomplishments that won him admiration and wonder from the simple
country boys. He had all the new ragtime songs and dances, which he
rendered to his own accompaniment on an old battered banjo. He was a
contortionist of quite unusual cleverness, while his fund of stories
never ran dry throughout the seven days' journey to Winnipeg. He set
himself with the greatest assiduity to impart his accomplishments to the
boys, and by the time the party had reached the end of the first stage
in their westward journey, Sam had the satisfaction of observing that
his pupils had made very satisfactory progress, both with the clog
dancing and with the ragtime songs. Besides this, he had made for
himself an assured place in their affection, and even Mr. Gwynne had
come to feel such an interest in the bit of human driftwood flung up
against him, that he decided to offer the waif a chance to try his
fortune in the West.

CHAPTER VI

JANE BROWN

Mr. Brown was a busy man, but he never failed to be in his place at
the foot of the table every day punctually at half past twelve, solely
because at that hour his little daughter, Jane, would show her grave and
earnest and dark brown, almost swarthy, face at the head. Eight years
ago another face used to appear there, also grave, earnest, but very
fair and very lovely to look upon, to the doctor the fairest of all
faces on the earth. The little, plain, swarthy-faced child the next day
after that lovely face had been forever shut away from the doctor's eyes
was placed in her high chair at the head of the table, at first only at
the lunch hour, but later at all meal times before the doctor to look
at. And it was an ever-recurring joy to the lonely man to discover in
the little grave face before him fleeting glimpses of the other face
so tenderly loved and so long vanished. These glimpses were to be
discovered now in the deep blue eyes, deep in colour and in setting, now
in the smile that lit up the dark, irregular features like the sudden
break of sunlight upon the rough landscape, transforming it into
loveliness, now in the knitting of the heavy eyebrows, and in the firm
pressing of the lips in moments of puzzled thought. In all the moods and
tenses of the little maid the doctor looked for and found reminiscences
of her mother.

Through those eight lonely years