nell, looking in of an evening, beheld what seemed to her a touching
sight, though one far beyond the deserts of such creatures as
McEwen--the son reading the newspaper aloud, or playing dominoes with
his father, or just smoking and chatting. Her hard common sense as a
working-woman suggested to her that Anderson was nursing illusions; and
she scornfully though silently hoped that the "old rip" would soon, one
way or another, be off his shoulders.

But the illusions, for the moment, were Anderson's sustenance. His
imagination, denied a more personal and passionate food, gave itself
with fire to the redeeming of an outlaw, and the paying of a
spiritual debt.

It was Wednesday. After a couple of drizzling days the weather was again
fair. The trains rolling through the pass began with these early days of
July to bring a first crop of holiday-makers from Eastern Canada and the
States; the hotels were filling up. On the morrow McEwen was to start
for Vancouver. And a letter from Philip Gaddesden, delivered at Laggan
in the morning, had bitterly reproached Anderson for neglecting them,
and leaving him, in particular, to be bored to death by glaciers
and tourists.

Early in the afternoon Anderson took his way up the mountain road to
Lake Louise. He found the English travellers established among the pines
by the lake-side, Philip half asleep in a hammock strung between two
pines, while Delaine was reading to Elizabeth from an article in an
archaeological review on "Some Fresh Light on the Cippus of Palestrina."

Lady Merton was embroidering; it seemed to Anderson that she was tired
or depressed. Delaine's booming voice, and the frequent Latin passages
interspersed with stammering translations of his own, in which he
appeared to be interminably tangled, would be enough--the Canadian
thought--to account for a subdued demeanour; and there was, moreover, a
sudden thunderous heat in the afternoon.

Elizabeth received him a little stiffly, and Philip roused himself from
sleep only to complain: "You've been four mortal days without
coming near us!"

"I had to go away. I have been to Regina."

"On politics?" asked Delaine.

"Yes. We had a couple of meetings and a row."

"Jolly for you!" grumbled Philip. "But we've had a beastly time. Ask
Elizabeth."

"Nothing but the weather!" said Elizabeth carelessly. "We couldn't even
see the mountains."

But why, as she spoke, should the delicate cheek change colour, suddenly
and bri