talking, because you're out for your health, and we'll keep you right
here until we see what Somasco can do for you, and just now I see Miss
Deringham alone on the verandah."

He rose, and left Deringham sitting by the window. The moon had swung
higher now, and the lake was a blaze of silver, but Deringham scarcely
noticed it or the ethereal line of snow. In place of it he saw a
shadowy figure hanging between earth and heaven with tense fingers
gripping a little bush, while a river frothed down the black hollow
five hundred feet below, and remembered that even in that moment the
man who hung there regretted he could not repay somebody who had
cheated him. Then he rose and moved once or twice up and down the
room, his fancy still dwelling upon the picture. If the juniper-twigs
had yielded it would have made a great difference to him as well as his
daughter. He sat down again presently and stared at the valley, seeing
nothing as he remembered that Alton of Somasco might go back to the
ranges again, and then with an effort shook the fancies from him. They
were not wholesome for a man hemmed in by difficulties as he was then.

In the meanwhile his daughter stood with one hand on the verandah
balustrade, listening to the song of the river which came sonorously
through the shadows of the bush. She also breathed in the scent of the
firs, and found it pleasant, but it was instinctively she did so, for
her thoughts were also busy. Alice Deringham had noticed her father's
fits of abstraction as well as the anxiety in his face, and had no
great difficulty in connecting them with the loss of Carnaby. She was
also fond of him, for Deringham had shown only his better side to her,
and sensible of a very bitter feeling towards the man who had
supplanted him. In addition to this, she remembered the faint
amusement in his eyes when he noticed the glint of a silver coin she