d country?"

"Yes," said Deringham thoughtfully, and was once more astonished by his
companion's answer.

"Well," he said slowly. "I was thinking about your daughter. All
this, it seems to me, is mighty rough on her. It would hurt her to be
turned out of Carnaby?"

"Isn't that beside the question?" said Deringham with a trace of
stiffness.

Alton took up another cigar and lighted it. "I don't quite know that
it is," he said. "You see, I remember a good deal what my mother had
to put up with, and it has made me kind of sorry for women who have to
do without the things they have been used to. Now Miss Deringham has
had a pretty good time in the old country?"

Deringham moved his head very slightly. "I scarcely think we need go
into that, but it is incontrovertible that the loss of Carnaby would
make a difference to her," he said.

Alton sat silent a space, and then while Deringham wondered, smiled a
little. "And she might have kept it but for a very little thing that
happened a month or two ago," he said. "If the juniper-twigs had
broken it would have saved considerable trouble to everybody. I was
back there in the mountains looking for a silver lead, you see."

"Silver mines are, I understand, not always profitable to the man who
finds them, and I should have fancied you had already sufficient scope
for your energies," said Deringham dryly.

Alton laughed, but there was a trace of grimness in his voice. "If I
once get my stakes in on the lead this one's going to be, and if I
could get the dollars I could do a good deal for Somasco," he said.
"We want roads and mills, the biggest orchard in the province, and a
fruit cannery, and we're going to have them presently. That's why I
wanted the silver."

"You did not find it then?" said Deringham, who was not unwilling to
follow his companion from the former topic.

"No," said Alton, "not that time, but I will by and by. Well, there
was a good deal of snow up in the ranges, and my feet got away from me
one evening when we were crawling along the edge of a gully. There was
a river and big boulders some five hundred feet below, and I slipped
down, clawing at the snow, until I grabbed a little bunch of juniper
just on the edge. Part of it tore up, but I got a grip of a better
handful, and hung on to it, with most of me swinging over the gully.
Charley was stripping off the pack-rope on the slope above, and he was
mighty quick, but I knew that bush was co