when a small
company of axemen and free prospectors filed in Deringham and his
daughter took their places amidst the rest.

The room was long and bare, boarded with rough-sawn cedar, and
furnished chiefly by the benches that ran down either side of the plain
table; but the aromatic smell of the wood was stronger than that of
stale tobacco, and the company avoided more than quietly respectful
glances at the daintily-dressed Englishwoman.

They were quiet men with grave and steady eyes, and though they ate as
if feeding was a serious business, and they had no time to waste, there
was nothing in their converse that jarred upon the girl. Indeed, she
saw one break off in a story whose conclusion she fancied might not
have pleased her when a comrade glanced at him deprecatingly. In
another ten minutes they filed out again, and Deringham smiled at his
daughter. "What do you think of them?" he said.

The girl laughed. "Ostriches," she said. "Of course, I guess your
thoughts. You were wondering if my kinsman resembles them. How long
do we stay here?"

Deringham glanced at her covertly, and noticed the faint sparkle in her
eyes and the scornful set of her lips. "That depends," he said,
"partly upon our kinsman's attitude, for if he offered us hospitality
we should probably stay a little. You were also right, my dear, as
usual."

The girl's pose grew a trifle more rigid, and the fingers of one hand
seemed to close vindictively. "It is grotesque--almost horrible, isn't
it?" she said.

Her father nodded. "It might be," he said. "Still, as you know, the
Carnaby affairs are involved, and there is a possibility of contesting
his claim under the somewhat extravagant will. It is not altogether
improbable that I shall find means of persuading him to stay here with
his cows and pigs."

Deringham slightly accentuated part of the sentence, and again a faint
tinge of colour crept into the face of the girl and vindictiveness into
her eyes, for she understood him. The man who had on his deathbed
bequeathed Carnaby to his grandson had driven out the young man's
father years ago, and approaching dissolution had possibly somewhat
clouded his faculties when he made the will. Deringham, who had
married into the Alton family, and figured as a legatee, was, with the
exception of the disinherited, the nearest of kin, and it had been
generally expected that Carnaby would fall to his daughter; but perhaps
in an endeavour to treat