ed in the man's companion, whose face she could not
see. The girl was dressed very plainly, and Miss Deringham decided
that the fabric had not cost much to begin with and was by no means
new. It, however, set off a pretty, slender figure, and the girl had
fine brown hair, while the little ungloved fingers on pencil were white
and shapely. Alice Deringham wondered with a languid curiosity what
her face was like, and felt a half contemptuous pity for her. She did
not consider such an occupation fitting for a woman.

Then her attention was diverted as a boy with a satchel calling out
"_Colonist_," in a shrill nasal drawl, came in, and she vacantly
watched a man who purchased a paper spread out the sheet.

"They've got that fellow up at Slocane," he said to a companion. "Yes,
sir, sent him down for trial, and it took a special guard to keep the
boys off him. I guess if he'd done it down our way they wouldn't have
worried, but put him in a tar-keg and set a light to him. They're way
behind the times in the Dominion."

"Killed him in his sleep for a hundred dollars," said another man,
glancing over the reader's shoulder, but Miss Deringham was not
interested in the murder she remembered having heard about. She was,
however, a trifle astonished to see that her father was watching the
gathering group with a serious look in his eyes, but he glanced down
somewhat hastily at his papers when he met her gaze. Then the voices
grew less distinct, and that of the man dictating broke monotonously
through them until a steward approached her father with an envelope in
his hand.

"Mr. Forel has just sent it down, sir," he said. "You're Mr.
Deringham?"

Deringham tore the envelope open, and while he sat staring at the paper
inside it his daughter noticed that there was a little pale spot in his
cheek. His hand also appeared to tremble slightly when, saying
nothing, he passed the telegram across to her.

"Regret to inform you that my partner met with accident in the ranges,
and his condition is critical," it read. "Can you send us nurse or
capable woman? Mrs. Margery ill. Seaforth, Somasco."

Alice Deringham shivered a little. "He is evidently dangerously
injured."

"It appears so," said Deringham, and his daughter afterwards remembered
that his voice was hoarse and strained.

The girl, however, said nothing for a while. She was not impulsive,
and her face remained almost as cold in its clear whiteness as the
pane