Devine went home a little earlier than usual after Saxton left him, and dusk was not far away when he sat recounting the affair in his wife's drawing-room. She listened with keen appreciation, and then looked up at him.

"But where is Brooke?" she said.

Devine smiled. "I guess he's buying mining tools. You can't keep that man out of a hardware store," he said. "I wanted to bring him back, but he was feeling better, and made up his mind to go out on the Atlantic express. He asked me to make his excuses, as he had fixed to meet an American machinery agent, and wasn't quite sure he could get round."

"Perhaps it is just as well," said Mrs. Devine, who appeared reflective. "Do you think you are wise in encouraging that man to come here, Grant?"

"I wouldn't exactly call it that. I brought him. He didn't want to come."

"You are, of course, quite sure?" and Mrs. Devine's smile implied that she, at least, was a trifle incredulous. "Hasn't it struck you that Barbara——"

"So far as I've noticed lately, Barbara didn't seem in any way pleased with him."

Mrs. Devine made a little impatient gesture. "That," she said, "is exactly what I don't like. It's a significant sign. Barbara wouldn't have been angry with him—if it was not worth while."

"You said nothing when he came to the ranch, while we were at the mine."

"The man was pleasant company, and there was, it seemed to me, very little risk of a superior workman attracting Barbara's fancy."

Devine laughed. "I guess I was of no great account when you married me."

"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Devine. "Anyway, you hadn't plotted to steal a mine from the people I belonged to."

Devine's eyes twinkled. "It showed his grit, and 'most anything is considered square in a mining deal. Besides, there were the six thousand dollars Slocum took out of him."

"I am quite aware that such transactions are evidently not subject to the ordinary code, but, seriously, if you would be content with Harford Brooke as my brother-in-law, it is considerably more than I would be. We don't even know why he left the Old Country."

"Well," said Devine, drily, "I guess I have a notion. I've been finding out a good deal about him. But get on with your objections."

"Barbara has a good many dollars."

"So has Brooke. You needn't worry about that point."

Mrs. Devine's astonishment was very apparent. "Then whatever is he working at the mine for—and why didn't you tell me before?"

"I guess it's because that kind of thing pleases him, and, anyway, it's only since last mail came in I knew."

"You're quite sure, now?"

"I'll tell you what I heard. There was a man who bought up our stock in England when nobody else seemed to have any use for it. The directors wanted to know a little about him, and they found it was a trust account. He was taking up the stock for another man, who had been left quite a few dollars, and that man was called Harford Brooke. The executor, it seems, told somebody that the man he was buying for was here. Now, it's not likely there are two of them in this part of Canada."

The door, as it happened, was not closed, and Mrs. Devine was too intent to hear it swing open a little further. "The dollars," she said, "are by no means the most important consideration, but still——"

She stopped abruptly at a sound, and then turned round with a little gasp, for Barbara stood just inside the room. Then there was a disconcerting silence for a moment or two, until the girl glanced at Devine.

"Yes," she said, quietly. "I heard. When did Mr. Brooke buy that stock?"

Devine understood the question, and once more the twinkle crept into his eyes.

"Well," he said, "it was quite a while before they found the silver. I don't know what he did it for. Now, I guess I've been here longer than I meant to stay. You'll excuse me, Katty."

He seemed in haste to get away, and when the door closed behind him the two who were left looked at one another curiously. Mrs. Devine was evidently embarrassed.

"I suppose," she said, drily, "you don't know why Brooke bought those shares, either?"

"I think I do," said Barbara, with unusual quietness, though the color was very visible in her cheeks. "He had a reason——"

She stopped abruptly, and there was once more an awkward silence, until she made a little impulsive gesture.

"Oh!" she said, sharply now, "I feel horribly mean. He stayed there through the winter when they had scarcely anything to eat, and bought that stock when nobody else would have it or believed in the Dayspring. Then he risked his life to save the Canopus, and when he came down, worn out and ill, I had only hard words for him.""Well," said Mrs. Devine, drily, "the sensation is probably good for you. You don't seem to remember that he also tried to jump the mine."

Barbara turned towards her with a little sparkle in her eyes. "Have you—never—done anything that was wrong?"

Mrs. Devine naturally saw the point of this, but while she considered her answer, Barbara, who had a good deal to think of, and scarcely felt equal to any further conversation just then, abruptly turned away. Glancing at her watch, she went straight to a room, from the window of which she could see the road to the depÔt, for she knew the Atlantic express would shortly start, and she had not been told that Brooke was not coming back. Exactly what she meant to say to him she did not know, but she felt she could not let him go without, at least, a slight expression of her appreciation of what he had done. She knew that he would value it, and that it would go far to blot out the memory of past unkindness. He had certainly meant to jump the Canopus, and deceived her shamefully, which was far harder to forgive, for the realization of the fact that she had bestowed rather more than friendliness upon a man who was unworthy of it had its sting, but she scarcely remembered that now. He had, it appeared, since then, sacrificed his fortune and broken down his strength, and that, considering the purpose which she fancied had impelled him, went a long way to condone his offences.

He, however, did not appear on the road, as she had expected; and she grew a trifle anxious when the tolling of a bell came up from the depÔt by the wharf as the big locomotive backed the long cars in. It was also significant that she did not notice that the room, which had no stove in it, was very cold. Then looking down she saw men with valises pass across an opening between the roofs and express wagons lurching along the uneven road. The train would start very soon, and there was at least one admission she must make, but the minutes were slipping by and still Brooke did not come. The man, it almost appeared, was content to go away without seeing her, though she felt compelled to admit that in view of what had passed at their last meeting this was not altogether astonishing. Still, the fact that he could do so hurt her, and she waited in a state of painful tension. A very few minutes would suffice for him to climb the hill, and even if there was no opportunity for an explanation, which now appeared very probable, a smile or even a glance might go a long way to set matters right.

The few minutes, however, slipped by as the rest had done, until at last the locomotive bell slowly clanged again, and the hoot of a whistle came up the hillside and was flung back by the pines. Then a puff of white smoke rolled up from the wharf, and Barbara turned away from the window with the crimson in her face as the cars swept through an opening between the clustering roofs. The train had gone, and the man would not know how far she had relented towards him. She could settle to nothing during the rest of the evening, and scarcely slept that night, though she naturally did not mention the fact when she and Mrs. Devine met at breakfast next morning. Instead, she took out a letter she had received a week earlier.

"It's from Hetty Hume, and the English mail goes out to-day," she said. "She suggests that I should come over and spend a few months with her. I really think we did what we could for her when she was here with the Major."

Mrs. Devine took the letter. "I fancy she wants you to go," she said. "She mentions that she has asked you several times already."

Barbara appeared reflective. "So she has," she said. "In fact, I think I'll go. The change will do me good."

"Well," said Mrs. Devine, "I suppose you can afford it, but if you indulge in many changes of that kind you're not going to have very much of a dowry."

"Do you think I need one?"

Mrs. Devine laughed as she glanced at her, but her face grew thoughtful again. "Perhaps in your case it wouldn't be necessary, and though it is a very long way, I fancy that you might do worse than go to England and stay there while Hetty is willing to keep you."

A little flush crept into Barbara's cheek, but she said quietly, "I think I'll start on Saturday."

She did so, and it came about one night while the big train she travelled by swept across the rolling levels of the Assiniboian prairie that Brooke sat in his shanty at the Dayspring with Jimmy, who had just come down from the range, standing in front of him. The freighter had still now and then a difficulty in bringing them provisions in, and whenever Jimmy found the persistent plying of drill and hammer pall upon him he would go out and look out for a deer, though it was not always that he came back with one. On this occasion he brought a somewhat alarming tale instead.

"A big snow-slide must have come along since I was up on that slope before, and gouged out quite a caÑon for itself," he said. "Anyway, if it wasn't a snow-slide it was a cloudburst or a waterspout. They happen around when folks don't want them now and then."

"Come to the point," said Brooke. "I'm sufficiently acquainted with the meteorological perversities of the country."

"Slinging names at them isn't much use. I've tried it, and any one raised here could give you points at the thing. Now before I came to Quatomac I was staying up at the Tillicum ranch, and I'd just taken a new twelve-dollar pair of gum-boots off one night when there was a waterspout up the valley that washed me and Jardine out of the house. We sailed along until we struck a convenient pine, and sat in it most of the night while the flood went down. Then I hadn't any gum-boots, and Jardine couldn't find his house."

"I believe you told me you went down the river on a door on the last occasion," Brooke said, wearily. "Still, it doesn't greatly matter. What has all this to do with the hollow the snow-slide made in the range?"

"Well," said Jimmy, "I guess you know the way the big rock outcrop runs across the foot of the valley. Now, before the snow-slide or the waterspout came along the melting snow went down into the next hollow, and the one where the outcrop is got just enough to keep the outlet of the creek that comes through it open."

"I do. Will it be an hour or more before you make it clear how that concerns anybody?"

"No, sir. I'm getting right there. The snow's melting tolerably fast, and the drainage from the big peak isn't going the way it used to now. The foot of the valley's quite a nice-sized lake, and the stream has washed most of the broke-up pines the snow brought down into the outlet gully. I guess you have seen a bad lumber jam?"Brooke had, and he started as he recognized the significance of what was happening, for once a drifting log strikes fast in a narrow passage the stream is very apt to pile up and wedge fast those that come behind into a tolerably efficient substitute for a dam, while when log still follows log the result is usually an inextricable confusion of interlocked timber.

"When the jam up broke we'd have the water and the wreckage down on the mine," he said.

"All there is of it," said Jimmy. "It would cost quite a pile of dollars to dry the workings out."

Brooke strode to the door and flung it open, but there was black darkness outside and a persistent patter of thick warm rain. Then he swung round with an objurgation and Jimmy grinned.

"I guess it's no use. You couldn't see a pine ten foot off, and there isn't a man in the country who would go down that gully with a lantern in his hand," he said. "Go off to sleep. You'll see quite as much as you want to, anyway, to-morrow."

Brooke stood still and listened a moment or two while the hoarse roar of a river which he knew was swirling in fierce flood among the boulders far down in the hollow came up in deep reverberations across the pines. It was a significant hint of what was likely to happen when the pent-up water poured down upon the mine. Still, there was nothing he could do in that thick darkness.

"Sleep!" he said. "When almost every dollar I have—and a good deal more than that—is sunk in the mine."

"Well," said Jimmy, reflectively, "in your place, if I could make sure of the dollars, I'd take my chances on the rest. Now and then I'm quite thankful I haven't any. It saves a mighty lot of worry."

He swung out of the shanty, and Brooke, who flung himself down on his couch of spruce twigs, endeavored to sleep, though he had no great expectation of succeeding. As it happened, he lay tossing or holding himself still by an effort the long night through, for he had set his whole mind on the prosperity of the Dayspring. A good deal of his small fortune was also sunk in it, though that was not of the greatest moment to him. He had a vague hope that when the mine was, through his efforts, pouring out high-grade ore, he might reinstate himself in Barbara's estimation. In that case, at least, she might believe in his contrition, for he felt that where protests were evidently useless deeds might avail. Then the dollars in question would be valuable to him.

It was two hours before the dawn, and still apparently raining hard, when he rose and lighted the stove. He felt a trifle dizzy and very shivery as he did it, but the frugal breakfast put a little warmth into him, and he went out into the thick haze of falling water and up the hillside, walking somewhat wearily and with considerably more effort than he had found it necessary to make a few months ago.