him
was to be found not far from either of the houses he proposed to visit.

He set out on foot next morning, and after climbing a steep pass
followed a winding track across a waste of empty moor until he struck a
smooth white road, which led past a rock-girt lake and into a deep
valley. It was six o'clock when he started, and three when he reached
the inn, where he found an answer to one of his letters awaiting him.
It was from Major Radcliffe, who desired an interview with him as soon
as possible.

Within an hour he was on his way to the Major's house, where a
grey-haired man, whose yellow skin suggested long exposure to a
tropical sun, and a little withered lady were waiting for him. They
received him graciously, but there was an indefinite something in their
manner and bearing which Wyllard, who had read a good deal, recognised,
though he had never been brought into actual contact with it until
then. He felt that he could not have expected to come across such
people anywhere but in England, unless it was at the headquarters of a
British battalion in India.

He told his story tersely, softening unpleasant details, and making
little of what he had done, and the grey-haired man listened gravely
with an unmoved face, though a trace of moisture crept into the little
lady's eyes. There was silence for a moment or two when he had
finished, and then Major Radcliffe, whose manner was very quiet, turned
to him.

"You have laid me under an obligation which I could never wipe out,
even if I wished it," he said. "It was my only son you buried out
there in Canada."

He broke off for a moment, and his quietness was more marked than ever
when he went on again.

"As you have no doubt surmised, we quarrelled," he said. "He was
extravagant and careless--at least I thought that then--but now it
seems to me that I was unduly hard on him. His mother"--and he turned
to the little lady with an inclination that pleased Wyllard
curiously--"was sure of it at the time. In any case, I took the wrong
way, and he went out to Canada. I made that, at least, easy for
him--and I have been sorry ever since."

He paused again with a little expressive gesture. "It seems due to
him, and you, that I should tell you this. When no word reached us I
had inquiries made, through a banker he called upon, who, discovering
that he had registered at a hotel as Pattinson, at length traced him to
a British Columbian silver mine. He had, howeve