ming away with me, and didn't
think he could be fast enough. I didn't feel exactly happy, but while
I've read that folks think of some astonishing things when they're
starting out on the long trail, it wasn't that way with me. I could
only remember there was a man I'd never got even with who'd badly
cheated me."

[Illustration: "There was a river and big boulders some five hundred
feet below."]

Deringham felt a little shiver run through him, for there was a grim
vindictiveness in the speaker's tone, and he felt that Alton of Somasco
would not lightly forgive an injury.

"You managed to crawl up?" he said.

"No," said Alton simply, "I didn't. I lay there watching Charley, and
felt the bush drawing out, until the rope came down and Charley hauled
me up. It would have made a big difference to Miss Deringham if he'd
been a second or two longer. Well, we'll have lots of time for
talking, because you're out for your health, and we'll keep you right
here until we see what Somasco can do for you, and just now I see Miss
Deringham alone on the verandah."

He rose, and left Deringham sitting by the window. The moon had swung
higher now, and the lake was a blaze of silver, but Deringham scarcely
noticed it or the ethereal line of snow. In place of it he saw a
shadowy figure hanging between earth and heaven with tense fingers
gripping a little bush, while a river frothed down the black hollow
five hundred feet below, and remembered that even in that moment the
man who hung there regretted he could not repay somebody who had
cheated him. Then he rose and moved once or twice up and down the
room, his fancy still dwelling upon the picture. If the juniper-twigs
had yielded it would have made a great difference to him as well as his
daughter. He sat down again presently and stared at the valley, seeing
nothing as he remembered that Alton of Somasco might go back to the
ranges again, and then with an effort shook the fancies from him. They
were not wholesome for a man hemmed in by difficulties as he was then.

In the meanwhile his daughter stood with one hand on the verandah
balustrade, listening to the song of the river which came sonorously
through the shadows of the bush. She also breathed in the scent of the
firs, and found it pleasant, but it was instinctively she did so, for
her thoughts were also busy. Alice Deringham had noticed her father's
fits of abstraction as well as the anxiety in his face, and had no