d stylish, isn't she? Now we have pretty
girls right here in Vancouver, but I fancy they can still give us
points in one respect in the old country. You think that is foolish of
me? Well, I wouldn't worry to tell me so; I think Commander Thorne
could do it more neatly."

"He is apparently too busy," said Alton. "Still, I fancy if you asked
him he would support me."

Mrs. Forel smiled mischievously, "Well, though one could scarcely blame
you, jealousy wouldn't do you any good. Those two were great friends
in the old country."

"That," said Alton, "is a little indefinite."

"Of course, but I don't know anything more," said his companion.
"Lieutenant Atkinson, who knew them both, told me. Thorne wasn't rich,
you see, but he comes of good people, and not long ago somebody left
him all their money. Quite romantic, isn't it? Still, don't you think
Miss Deringham would be thrown away upon anybody less than a baronet."

Alton did not answer, but his face grew somewhat grim as once more he
glanced across at Thorne. This, he thought, was a good man, and he had
all that Alton felt himself so horribly deficient in. In the meanwhile
Mrs. Forel was looking at Seaforth, who was talking to the wife of an
English financier.

"I like your partner, and he is from the old country, too," she said.
"Of course you know what he was over there?"

It was put artlessly, but Alton's eyes twinkled. "I'm afraid I don't,
though I've no doubt Charley would have told me if I'd asked him," he
said. "He is a tolerably useful man in this country, anyway, and that
kind of contented me."

The lady shook her head at him reproachfully. "And I thought you were
slow in the bush," said she. "Still, Thorne will know."

Alton fancied his hostess intended to be kind to him, but he was glad
when the dinner was over and he gravitated with the other men towards
Forel's smoking-room. There, as it happened, the talk turned upon
shooting and fishing, and when one or two of the guests had narrated
their adventures in the ranges, one who was bent and grizzled told in
turn several grim stories of the early days when the treasure-seekers
went up into the snows of Caribou. There was a brief silence when he
had finished, until one of the Englishmen said:

"I presume things of that kind seldom happen now?"

"I don't know," said Seaforth, who spoke in the Western idiom. "We
have still a few of the good old-fashioned villains right here in this
coun