she turned to him again. Nasmyth, who noticed it,
winced.

"Well," he hazarded, "it was, perhaps, not the only one."

"No," confessed Violet very softly, "there was another thing which
influenced me rather more."

Nasmyth, who understood her, stood silent a moment or two, with one
hand tightly closed. "In that case there is nothing to be said, and I
must try to face it gracefully," he told her. "Reproaches are not
exactly becoming in the case of a discarded man." He took off his wide
hat as he held out his hand. "Miss Hamilton, the thing naturally hurts
me, but perhaps I cannot reasonably blame you. I'm not sure you could
expect me to go any further now."

"Ah!" exclaimed Violet, "you have made it easy. I would like to assure
you of my good-will."

He held her hand a moment and swung abruptly away. He met Mrs. Acton
as he went down a corridor. He stopped in front of her, and she
looked at him questioningly when she saw his face.

"I have not come up to expectations. It is, perhaps, fortunate Miss
Hamilton found it out when she did," he said.

"Oh!" Mrs. Acton replied, "I told you it would not be well to stay
away very long."

"I scarcely think the result would have been different in any case,"
Nasmyth declared.

Mrs. Acton was silent for a moment. Then she looked at him sharply.

"Where are you going now?" she asked.

"Back to the world I belong to," answered Nasmyth,--"to the railroad,
in the first case. I'm not sure that Miss Hamilton would like to feel
that I was in the house."

Mrs. Acton made no protest, and ten minutes later he had crossed the
clearing and plunged into the Bush.

Mrs. Acton, crossing the veranda, laid her hand on the girl's
shoulder.

"I naturally don't know what he said to you, but I can't help
believing that he acquitted himself rather well," she observed. "After
all, it must have been a little painful to him."

"Perhaps it was," replied Violet. "Still, I don't think it hurt him
dreadfully."

She was more or less correct in this surmise, for, as Nasmyth walked
on through the Bush, he became conscious of a faint relief.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE LAST SHOT

Laura Waynefleet was preparing breakfast, and the door of the ranch
stood open, when she heard the sharp clatter of the flung-down
slip-rails in the fence across the clearing jar upon the stillness of
the surrounding woods. It was early in the morning, and since it was
evident that, if the strangers who were approac