ung
together any way. Building and stock were of the crudest description,
and there was certainly nothing about either that suggested any degree
of prosperity. Then he glanced at his companions: the storekeeper,
dressed in shirt and trousers of a kind that no fastidious man would
think of wearing, and Devine, who had worn-out boots and was
suggestively ragged and lean. They did not look the kind of men who
were likely to pit themselves successfully against opulent financiers
and stock-jobbers in Montreal, but something in their grim faces
suggested that at least they meant to fight.

"Well," he said, "I'll start to-morrow, and do what I can. It's quite
likely that before we put the thing through we'll have trouble."

CHAPTER XXIV

A QUALIFIED SUCCESS

Ida Stirling was sitting by an open window of a very
artistically-furnished room, with an English newspaper lying on the
little table beside her, and _The Colonist_, which is published in
British Columbia, on her knee. She fancied from the writing on the
wrapper that Arabella Kinnaird had sent her the former, and there was
a paragraph in it which had interested her more than a little.

Trouble, it seemed, had broken out up a muddy African river, and a
white officer lying sick of fever at the time had forthwith set off
for the scene of it, with a handful of half-drilled black soldiery.
They had vanished into the steamy bush, and for several weeks nothing
had been heard of them; then, when those acquainted with the country
had decided that the little detachment had probably been cut off to a
man, half of them had unexpectedly appeared again. They now carried
their leader in a hammock, as he had been wounded by several pieces of
cast-iron fired out of a gaspipe gun; but they also brought back the
dusky gentlemen who had been responsible for the abortive rising.
Gregory Kinnaird had, it transpired, blundered into a couple of
ambushes, but that, and the fact that he had marched straight through
them, did not astonish Ida, who was more or less acquainted with his
character. He was, the paper stated, recovering from his injuries,
though it judiciously refrained from mentioning whether the
authorities applauded or censured him.

It was not an uncommon story in connection with the country in
question, but it sent a little thrill through the girl as she read it.
The rising from the sick-bed and the blundering into the ambuscades
were so characteristic of the man. He