lling behind it, but her heart beat a little faster than usual, and
she was trying somewhat unsuccessfully to analyze her sensations. In
the meanwhile the voices of the men who now surrounded the one with the
paper reached her, and she noticed vacantly that her father seemed to
be listening to them.

"They'll hang him, anyway," said one.

"Made no show at all when they got him hiding in the bush," said
another. "Still, you couldn't expect much from that kind of man.
Killed him for a hundred dollars in his bed."

"Yes, sir," said the first speaker. "And he didn't get all of them.
The man was his own cousin, and too sick to do anything. Well, thank
God, we haven't got many vermin of that kind in the Dominion."

Deringham, who had picked up the telegram, let it slip from his fingers
as he rose, and the girl wondered at the change in him. He seemed to
have grown suddenly haggard, and the lines upon his face were much more
apparent than usual.

"You will excuse me a minute," he said, and the girl noticed the
curious deliberation of his movements and the stoop in his shoulders as
he crossed the saloon.

Deringham had faced more than one crisis in the past, and the
difference in his pose might not have attracted a stranger's notice,
though it was evident to his daughter that something had troubled him.
Why he should be so disturbed by the news of Alton's condition she
could not quite see, but that appeared of the less importance, because
she was endeavouring to evade the question why the telegram should also
have caused her a curious consternation. He was a half-taught rancher,
and she had been accustomed to the homage of men of mark and polish in
England--but it was with something approaching dismay she heard that
the man who had supplanted her father was, though she could scarcely
contemplate the possibility, dying.

In the meanwhile Deringham walked into the bar, and leaned somewhat
heavily upon the counter as he asked for a glass of brandy. He spilled
a little of it, and the steward, who saw that his fingers shook,
glanced at him curiously as he set it down.

"I guess that will fix you, sir," he said. "You're not feeling well?"

Deringham made a little gesture of assent, and the man drew him out a
chair. "That is good brandy," he said. "You'd better sit down there
quietly and have another. Here's _The Colonist_. They've got that
fellow up at Slocane, but one feels sorry the boys didn't get hold of
hi