"If you accompany me as far as Jake's cove, where my launch is, I think I can furnish you with a paper from your countryside. I have friends in the city, in the States and in England, who supply me, every week, with American and Old Country papers. There are so many men from both lands in the camps and settled along the coast and they all so dearly love a newspaper. I generally try to give them what has been issued nearest their own home towns."
I rowed Mr. Auld over to his launch and wished him good-bye, receiving from his kindly old hands a copy of The Northern Examiner, dated three days after I had left Brammerton.
It was like meeting with an old friend, whom I had expected never to meet again. I put it in my inside pocket for consideration when I should get back to my bungalow with plenty of time to enjoy it.
I dropped in to Jake's shack, for I had not seen him all the sleepy day. I found him sitting in perfect content, buried up over the eyes in a current issue of The Northern Lights,—a Dawson newspaper, which had been in existence since the old Klondike days and was much relished by old-timers.
The dog was curled up near the stove, sleeping off certain effects; Jake was at his second cup of whisky. I left them to the peace and sanctity of their Sabbath evening and rowed back to "Paradise Regained," as I had already christened my bungalow.
I sat down on the steps of the veranda, to peruse the home paper which the minister had left with me, and it was not long before I was startled by a flaring headline. The blood rushed from my face to my heart and seemed as if it would burst that great, throbbing organ:—
"SUDDEN DEATH OF THE EARL OF BRAMMERTON AND HAZELMERE."
My eyes scanned the notice.
"News has been telegraphed that the Earl of Brammerton and Hazelmere died suddenly of heart failure at his country residence, Hazelmere. His demise has caused a profound sensation, as it occurred on the eve of a House Party, arranged in celebration of the engagement of his son, Viscount Harry Brammerton, Captain of the Coldstream Guards, to the beautiful Lady Rosemary Granton, daughter of the late General Frederick Granton, who was the companion and dearest friend of the late Earl of Brammerton in the early days of their campaigning in the Crimea and India."
A long obituary notice followed, concluding with the following paragraph: