the money. The lot he bought outside a wooden town doubled in value, and the share he took in a new orchard paid him well; but he had held aloof from the cities, and his only recklessness had been prospecting journeys into the wilderness. Prospecting for minerals is at once an art and a gamble, but even in this direction, in which he had had keen wits against him, Vane had held his own; but there was one side of life with which he was practically unacquainted.
There are no social amenities on the rangeside or in the bush, and women are scarce. Vane had lived in Spartan simplicity; his passions had remained unstirred, and now he was seven-and-twenty, sound and vigorous of body and, as a rule, level of head. At length, however, there was to be a change. He had earned an interlude of leisure, and he meant to enjoy it, without, as he prudently determined, making a fool of himself.
Presently Carroll took his pipe from his mouth.
“Are you going ashore to the show to-night?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Vane lazily. “It’s a long while since I’ve struck another entertainment of any kind, and that yellow-haired mite’s dancing is one of the prettiest things I’ve seen.”
“You’ve been twice already,” Carroll pointed out. “The girl with the blue eyes sings her first song rather well.”
“I think so,” Vane agreed with a significant absence of embarrassment. “In this case a good deal depends upon the singing – the interpretation, don’t they call it? The thing’s on the border, and I’ve struck places where they’d have made it gross; but the girl only brought out the mischief. Strikes me she didn’t see there was anything else in it.”
“That’s curious, considering the crowd she goes about with,” Carroll suggested. “Aren’t you cultivating a critical faculty?”
Vane disregarded the ironical question. “She’s Irish; that accounts for a good deal.” He paused and looked thoughtful. “If I knew how to do it, I’d like to give the child who dances five dollars. It must be a tough life, and her mother – the woman at the piano – looks ill. I wonder why they came to a place like this?”
“Struck a cold streak at Nanaimo, the storekeeper told me,” Carroll replied. “Anyway, since we’re to start at sun-up, I’m staying here.” Then he smiled. “Has it struck you that your attendance in the front seats is liable to misconception?”
His companion rose without answering and dropped into the canoe. Thrusting her off, he drove the craft towards the wharf with vigorous strokes, and Carroll shook his head whimsically as he watched him.
“Anybody except myself would conclude that he was waking up at last,” he said.
A minute or two later, Vane swung himself up on to the wharf and strode into the wooden settlement. There were one or two hydraulic mines and a pulp mill in the vicinity, and though the place was by no means populous, a company of third-rate entertainers had arrived some days earlier. On reaching the rude wooden building in which they had given their performance and finding it closed, he accosted a lounger.
“What’s become of the show?” he asked.
“Busted,” replied the man. “Didn’t take the boys’ fancy, and the crowd went out with the stage this afternoon, though I heard that two of the women stayed behind.”
Vane turned away with a slight sense of compassion. He, however, dismissed the matter from his mind, and having been kneeling in a cramped position in the canoe most of the day, decided to stroll along the waterside before going back to the sloop.
Great firs stretched out their sombre branches over the smooth shingle, and now the sun had gone their clean resinous smell was heavy on the dew-cooled air. Here and there brushwood grew among out-cropping rock, and catching sight of what looked like a stripe of woven fabric beneath a brake, he strode towards it. Then he stopped with a start, for a young woman lay with her face hidden from him in an attitude of dejected abandonment. He was about to turn away softly, when she started and looked up at him. Her eyes were wet, but they were of the deep blue he had described to Carroll, and he stood still.
“You shouldn’t give way like that,” he said.
It was all he could think of; but he spoke without obtrusive assurance or pronounced embarrassment, and the girl, who shook out her crumpled skirt over one little foot with a swift movement, choked back a sob, and favoured him with a glance of keen scrutiny as she rose to a sitting posture. She was quick at reading character – the life she led had made that necessary – and his manner and appearance were reassuring. She, however, said nothing, and sitting down on a neighbouring boulder, he took out his pipe from force of habit.
“Well,” he added, in much the same tone as he would have used to a distressed child, “what’s the trouble?”
She told him, speaking on impulse. “They’ve gone off and left me. The takings didn’t meet expenses.”
“That’s bad,” said Vane gravely. “Do you mean they’ve left you alone?”
“No,” replied the girl; “in a way it’s worse than that. I suppose I could go – somewhere – but there’s Mrs. Marvin and Elsie.”
“The child who danced?”
The girl assented, and Vane looked thoughtful.
“The three of you stick together,” he suggested.
“Of course. Mrs. Marvin’s the only friend I have.”
“Then I suppose you’ve no idea what to do?”
His companion confessed it, and explained that it was the cause of her distress and that they had had bad luck of late. Vane could understand that as he looked at her; her dress was shabby, and he fancied she had not been bountifully fed.
“If you stayed here a few days, you could go out with the next stage, and get on to Victoria with the cars,” he said. He paused and continued diffidently: “It could be arranged with the hotel-keeper.”
She laughed in a half-hysterical manner, and he remembered that fares were high in the country.
“I suppose you have no money,” he added, with blunt directness. “I want you to tell Mrs. Marvin that I’ll lend her enough to take you all to Victoria.”
Her face crimsoned, which was not quite what he had expected, and he suddenly felt embarrassed.
“No,” she replied; “I can’t do that. For one thing, it would be too late when we got to Victoria. I think we could get an engagement if we reached Vancouver in time to get to Kamloops by – ”
Vane knitted his brows when he heard the date, and it was a moment or two before he spoke.
“Then,” he said, “there’s only one way you can do so. There’s a little steamboat coming down the coast to-night, and I had half thought of intercepting her and handing the skipper some letters to post in Victoria. He knows me. That’s my sloop yonder, and if I put you on board the steamer, you’d reach Vancouver in good time. We would have sailed at sun-up anyway.”
The girl hesitated, which struck Vane as natural, and turned partly from him. He surmised that she did not know what to make of his offer, though her need was urgent. In the meanwhile he stood up.
“Come along and talk it over with Mrs. Marvin,” he went on. “I’d better tell you I’m Wallace Vane of the Clermont mine. Of
