l, who rose and took up the supper dishes.
"Still, I feel sure that he is."

Townshead turned towards her. "You fancied so a moment or two ago, and
now you are sure," he said. "There must be some meaning to this."

His daughter looked round and laughed a little, holding the tray at a
perilous slope. "He made me promise to let him know," she said.

Her father shook his head. "A young man of Mr. Alton's description
does not do anything of the kind without a motive," he said. "Now I
wonder if there are minerals upon the ranch."

The colour crept into his daughter's cheeks again. "They would in any
case belong to the Crown," she said. "Can you not believe that the man
who packed our provisions in through flooded fords and snow would do
anything out of generosity?"

She turned away and left him, and Townshead puckered his face
dubiously. "I should find it very difficult, and the care of a
daughter is a heavy responsibility," he said. Miss Townshead did not
return for some little while, but stood above the cedar washing-board
scarcely seeing the dishes that once or twice almost slipped from her
hand. There was, her father had told her, one man who could help them
in the only way in which assistance could be accepted, and she felt
sure he would. If rancher Alton failed to keep his word she felt it
would be very difficult to believe in the honour of his sex again.

CHAPTER XI

CONFIDENCE MISPLACED

There was sliding mist in the Somasco valley, and the pines were
dripping when Alton and Miss Deringham stood upon a slippery ledge
above the river. Just there it came down frothing into a deep, black
pool, swung round it white-streaked, and swept on with a hoarse murmur
into the gloom of the bush again. A wall of fissured rock overhung the
pool on the farther side, and a fallen pine wetted with the spray
stretched across the outflow and rested on one jagged pinnacle. A wet
wind which drove the vapours before it called up wild music from the
cedars that loomed through them on the side of the hill.

"I'd cast across the rush at the head of the pool and let the fly come
down," said Alton. "There's generally a big trout lying in the eddy
behind the boulder."

The girl nodded, and the line sweeping back towards the pines behind
her went forward again. It fell lightly amidst the frothing rush, and
Alton smiled approval as he watched the rod point follow it downstream
towards a foam-licked rock. It swung