They probably looked high and low
for you. But there is no chance for them to learn where you actually
did get to unless you yourself tell them. The most plausible
explanation--and if you go there you must make some explanation--would
be for you to say that you got lost--which is true enough--and that you
eventually fell in with a party of Indians, and later on connected up
with a party of white people who were traveling coastward. That you
wintered with them, and they put you on a steamer and sent you to
Vancouver when spring opened.

"That, I guess, is all," he concluded slowly. "Only I wish"--he caught
her by the shoulders and shook her gently--"I sure do wish it could
have been different, little person. Maybe you'll have a kindlier
feeling for this big old North when you get back into your cities and
towns, with their smoke and smells and business sharks, where it's
everybody for himself and the devil take the hindmost. Maybe some time
when I get restless for human companionship and come out to cavort in
the bright lights for a while, I may pass you on a street somewhere.
This world is very small. Oh, yes--when you get to Vancouver go to the
Ladysmith. It's a nice, quiet hotel in the West End. Any hack driver
knows the place."

He dropped his hands, and looked steadily at her for a few seconds,
steadily and longingly.

"Good-by!" he said abruptly--and walked out, and down the gangplank
that was already being cast loose, and away up the wharf without a
backward glance.

The _Stanley D.'s_ siren woke the echoes along the wooded shore. A
throbbing that shook her from stem to stern betokened the first
turnings of the screw. And slowly she backed into deep water and swung
wide for the outer passage.

Hazel went out to the rail. Bill Wagstaff had disappeared, but
presently she caught sight of him standing on the shore end of the
wharf, his hands thrust deep in his coat pockets, staring after the
steamer. Hazel waved the envelope that she still held in her hand.
Now that she was independent of him, she felt magnanimous,
forgiving--and suddenly very much alone, as if she had dropped back
into the old, depressing Granville atmosphere. But he gave no
answering sign save that he turned on the instant and went up the hill
to where his horses stood tied among the huddled buildings. And within
twenty minutes the _Stanley D._ turned a jutting point, and Bella Coola
was lost to view.

Hazel went back into h