n Mr. Mackay."

"My name is still Angus."

"Oh, but that was years ago. How did you recognize me? I was such a
little girl. To think of meeting you again--like this!"

"I knew you by your lisp," he told her. "And I wish you would call me
'Angus.'"

"Well--Anguth!" She said it with the old lisp. "I can't help it
sometimes," she confessed. "I struggle and struggle, and then I forget
myself and--lithp. Do you mind it very much?"

"I like it."

"Tho nithe of you to thay tho!" she exaggerated laughing. "No, I won't
lisp any more--until I forget myself. But how big you are--almost as big
as Gavin himself."

"I am big enough," Angus admitted. "I get in my own way sometimes." For
the first time he noticed a black band on her sleeve. She caught the
glance.

"My father died two months ago." Her voice broke, and Angus looked away.

"I am sorry," he said awkwardly.

"I can't talk about it very well yet," she said. "I didn't mean to. One
shouldn't--to a stranger."

"But I'm not a stranger. You seem like--well--like an old friend."

"I'm glad of that," she said, smiling a trifle sadly. "You see, father
and I were always together, and it's new and--and hard to be alone. But
I suppose I shall get used to it after a while."

"You have your kin here," he ventured.

"Yes, I have them," she agreed. "But they are not really my kin. And
then I won't be with them very long."

"You are going away?" For some reason Angus experienced a sensation of
regret.

"No, I am going to stay here. I am thinking of ranching."

"Ranching!" he exclaimed.

"Yes. Why not?"

"Do you know anything about it?"

"No, but I could learn, I suppose."

"I suppose you might. But the work is hard--man's work. I wouldn't buy a
ranch, if I were you."

"But I have one--or the makings of one. A few years ago Uncle Godfrey
bought nearly a thousand acres for father. I'm afraid there isn't much
of it cleared, and there is no house fit to live in. I had been to look
at it, and was riding back by this old logging camp. That's how I
happened to be here."

"Where is this land?" Angus asked.

Her reply gave him almost as much of a shock as he had received from the
bear; for as she described it, the land, or at least part of it, was
none other than the old Tetreau place which Mr. Braden had painstakingly
tried to unload on Chetwood. But if it belonged to her or to her father
how could Braden sell it? And then, again, she had spoken of nearly a
thousan