road with
this message as if the devil was after you," he said.

Okanagan stretched himself sleepily. "Horton's sending in at sun up."

"Yes," said Alton dryly. "I want my message on the wires some hours
before his, but nobody need know of it beyond you and me."

Okanagan nodded, and in another five minutes Alton looked into the room
where Horton was still writing.

"I fancied I heard somebody riding down the trail, but it's not quite
easy being a magistrate, and my head's got kind of mixed," said the
latter. "Still, I've nearly got this thing fixed, and if the folks
down in Vancouver don't fool over it, when Hallam hears what's happened
to his partner he'll be under lock and key."

"Oh, yes," said Alton. "We'll hope for the best, though that man's
kind of slippery."

In the meanwhile Tom of Okanagan was riding at a gallop down the trail,
with the thin mist whirling by him and the stars above him growing dim,
and there were several leagues between him and the settlement when
daylight crept slowly into the valley. Thus it happened that Horton's
dispatches to the police at Vancouver were not the first that left the
station, and that evening Deringham, who was sitting with his daughter
on the verandah of Forel's house, turned from the girl with a little
closing of his lips as he saw Hallam coming up the pathway. His
movements suggested nervous haste, and though he was usually neat in
dress, his unbuttoned coat had evidently been flung on, while the
glance he cast behind him towards the wharf where one of the Sound
steamers was about to sail savoured of apprehension. This did not
escape Alice Deringham.

"Mr. Hallam seems to be in a hurry," she said. "I wish he had not come
now, because I do not like that man, and you have not been well lately.
You will not let him disturb you?"

Deringham rose and looked down on her with a curious little smile. "I
don't know that it can be helped, but I am no more pleased to see Mr.
Hallam than you seem to be," he said.

For a moment, and though the breach between them had not been healed,
the girl's heart smote her. Deringham had beguiled her into an action
whose memory would, she fancied, always retain its sting, but he was
her father, and seemed very worn and ill. Also some instinctive
impulse prompted her to detain him.

"Father," she said pleadingly, "don't see him. Go in at once, and I
will tell him that quietness is necessary to you."

Deringham had almost