aken
over the office of the Somasco Consolidated on his arrival at
Vancouver, and while she considered the question a voice came out of
the adjoining room.

"Hallam's at Westminster, and it will have to wait until he comes round
in the morning. Don't stay any longer, and take Miss Townshead with
you. It's later than I fancied."

Five minutes afterwards the two girls went out into the silent streets,
and Miss Townshead, who left her companion at the corner of one of
them, turned round again and walked back somewhat slowly part of the
way she had come. She did not notice that Miss Holder had also turned
and was watching her, for she realized for the first time that what she
was about to do admitted of misconception. Still, remembering how
Hallam had tricked her father, she went on, and only stopped for a
moment when she entered the great building in the upper part of which
was the office of the Somasco Consolidated. It was very silent. The
rooms which had hummed with voices all day long were shut, and one
blinking light emphasized the darkness of the big empty corridor.
Scarcely a sound reached her from the city, but she had seen that two
windows high up were lighted, and went up the stairway resolutely. The
warning could be delivered in less than a minute, and she fancied that
Alton would not be alone, while she knew that the conventionalities as
understood in England are almost unknown in the West.

As it happened Alton, who, though Miss Townshead did not know this,
lived in the room adjoining his office, was busy about the stove just
then. In those days, when Vancouver had more inhabitants than it could
well find room for and its hotels overflowed, single men taking their
meals in the public restaurants lived as best they could, over their
stores and offices, or in rude cabins and shanties flung up anywhere on
the outskirts of the city, while it is not improbable that a good many
of them live in much the same fashion now. Alton had, however, missed
the six o'clock supper, for reasons which the sheaf of papers on his
desk made plain, and was then engaged in cooking something in a
frying-pan. A portable cedar partition partly shrouded the little
table set out with a few plates, and the stove, while his old
worked-deerhide slippers and loose jacket indicated that the man was
just then not so much in his place of business as at home. He had been
busy in the city and at his desk for ten hours that day, for the