that side of the matter made him useless for any other purpose: so that
she soon ceased from cross-examining him, and he rose to go.

"Well, I'm sorry not to have seen Miss Henderson," he said awkwardly,
twisting his cap. "I'd like to have had a talk with her about Canada. It
was old Halsey told me she'd lived in Canada."

"Yes," said Janet irresponsively.

Dempsey smiled broadly and seemed embarrassed. At last he said with a
jerk:--

"I wonder if Miss Henderson ever knew a man called Tanner--who lived near
Winnipeg?"

"I never heard her speak of him."

"Because"--he still twirled--"when I saw Miss Henderson at Millsborough
that day of the rally, I thought as I'd seen her before."

"Oh?" said Janet ardently. But some instinct put her on her guard.

"Dick Tanner, they called him, was a man--an artist chap--who lived not
far from the man I was with--and I once saw a lady there just like Miss
Henderson."

"Did you?"

Dempsey grew bolder.

"Only it couldn't have been Miss Henderson, you see--because this lady I
saw was a Mrs. Delane. But was Mrs. Delane perhaps a relation of Miss
Henderson? She was just like Miss Henderson."

"I'll ask Miss Henderson," said Janet, moving towards the door, as a
signal to him to take his leave. "But I expect you're confusing her with
some one else."

Dempsey, however, began rather eagerly to dot the i's. The picture of the
snowstorm, of the woman at the door, various points in his description
of her, and of the solitary--apparently bachelor--owner of the farm,
began to affect Janet uncomfortably. She got rid of the chatter-box as
soon as possible, and went slowly to the kitchen, to get supper ready. As
she fried the bacon, and took some vegetables out of the hay-box, she was
thinking fast.

Tanner? No--she had never heard Rachel mention the name. But it happened
that Dempsey had given a precise date. It was in the "November before
they Passed Conscription" in Canada, _i.e._ before he himself was called
up--that he saw Mrs. Delane, at night, in Dick Tanner's house. And Janet
remembered that, according to the story which as they two sat by the fire
alone at night, when the girls were gone to bed, Rachel had gradually
built up before her. It was in that same month that Rachel had been
deserted by Delane; who had gone off to British Columbia with the Italian
girl, as his wife afterwards knew, leaving Rachel alone on the farm--with
one Japanese servant.

Why shouldn't she hav