His companion made an abrupt movement, and he saw the sudden softening of her eyes. There was, however, only a gentle pity in her face, and nothing in her manner suggested the deeper feeling that he had half expected.
“Then,” she said, “I am sure that his father would like to meet you. There was some trouble between them—I don’t know which was wrong—and Lance went out to Canada, and never wrote. Major Radcliffe tried to trace him through a Vancouver banker, and only found that he had died in the hands of a stranger who had done all that was possible for him.” She turned to Wyllard with a look which set his heart beating faster than usual. “You are that man?”
“Yes,” said Wyllard simply, “I did what I could for him. It didn’t amount to very much. He was too far gone.”
Briefly he repeated the story that he had told to Hawtrey, and, when he had finished, her face was soft again, for what he said had stirred her curiously.
“But,” she commented, “he had no claim on you.”
Wyllard lifted one hand with a motion that disclaimed all right to commendation. “He was dying in the bush. Wasn’t that enough?”
The girl made no answer for a moment or two. She had earned her living for several years, and she was to some extent acquainted with the grim realities of life. She did not know that while there are hard men in Canada the small farmers and ranchers of the West—and, perhaps above all, the fearless free lances who build railroads and grapple with giant trees in the forests of the Pacific slope—are as a rule, distinguished by a splendid charity. With them the sick or worn-out stranger is seldom turned away. Watching the stranger covertly, she understood that this man whom she had seen for the first time three days before had done exactly what she would have expected of him.
“I saw a great deal of Lance Radcliffe—when I was younger,” she said. “His people still live at Garside Scar, close by Dufton Holme. I presume you will call on them?”
Wyllard said that he purposed doing so, as he had a watch and one or two other mementos that they might like to have, and she told him how to reach Dufton Holme by a round-about railway journey.
“There is one point that rather puzzles me,” she said, after she had made it plain how he was to find the Radcliffe family. “How did you know that I could tell you anything about him?”