He feared the girl had taken alarm at this candid statement, and spread his hands out deprecatingly. “Won’t you hear me out?” he added. “There’s a matter I must put before you, but I won’t keep you long.”
The girl was a little puzzled, and naturally curious. It struck her as strange that his admission should have aroused in her very little indignation; but she felt that it would be unreasonable to suspect this man of anything that savored of impertinence. His manner was reassuring, and she liked his face.
“Well?” she said inquiringly.
Wyllard waved his hand toward a big oak trunk that lay just inside the gate.
“If you’ll sit down, I’ll get through as quick as I can,” he promised. “In the first place, I am, as I told you, a Canadian, who has come over partly to see the country, and partly to carry out one or two missions. In regard to one of them I believe you can help me.”
The girl’s face expressed a natural astonishment.
“I could help you?”
Wyllard nodded. “I’ll explain my reasons for believing it later on,” he said. “In the meanwhile, I asked you a question the other night, which I’ll now try to make more explicit. Were you ever acquainted with a young Englishman, who went to Canada from this country several years ago? He was about twenty then, and had dark hair and dark eyes. That, of course, isn’t an unusual thing, but there was a rather curious white mark on his left temple. If he was ever a friend of yours, that scar ought to fix it.”
“Oh!” cried the girl, “that must have been Lance Radcliffe. I was with him when the scar was made—ever so long ago. We heard that he was dead. But you said his name was Pattinson.”
“I did,” declared Wyllard gravely. “Still, I wasn’t quite sure about the name being right. He’s certainly dead. I buried him.”