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Updated: June 17, 2025
"You are Alton of Carnaby." "Pshaw!" said the man with a little gesture of pride and impatience, which Miss Deringham was forced to admit became him. "I'm Alton of Somasco, and nobody gave it me. I won it from the lake and the forest that comes crawling in again but I'm getting off the trail. I didn't know your father was coming here, and hadn't any notion who you were."
He caught the glint of the lustrous red-gold hair as she moved her head a trifle, and then turned his eyes away with a little restless movement that did not escape his companion. "We may hold the mine after all," he said. "Yes?" said Alice Deringham, with an evident eagerness which puzzled him. "That is very good news. And your other difficulties? You see, I made Mr.
Deringham was not a farmer, but he was a man of affairs, and all he saw spoke to him of prosperity that sprang from strenuous energy and administrative ability. "You are very silent," said his daughter. "What are you thinking?" Deringham laughed a little, somewhat mirthlessly. "It occurs to me that whatever our unknown relative may be he is a good rancher, if this is his handiwork," he said.
"It was the big bushman I saw there?" said another person, and Alice Deringham felt a curious little quiver in her fingers as she waited the answer. "Yes. Hettie will feel it. She made such a fuss of him, but it mayn't have been his fault altogether. He is quite a good-looking man, if he is a trifle lame, and the girl may have thrown herself at him. They sometimes do."
"Still," said Deringham, "the value is not inconsiderable, and Carnaby would have been yours some day." The girl made a gesture of impatience. "That is not my complaint," she said. "I could have let it pass without bitterness to an Englishman who would have lived in it in accordance with the traditions of his race, but this man "
Alton followed his host, wondering at what he had seen. It was evident that Miss Deringham had not noticed him, and he fancied she had been for a moment almost embarrassed by the encounter with Thorne. That and what the man had told him had its meaning.
My father commenced it, and I have finished. The Almighty made him a man, and he wouldn't sell his birthright to loaf his days away, overfed, at Carnaby." Alton dropped his cigar, and laughed a little. "Well, I'm talking like a fool again. There are times when I can't help it. It's a way of mine." Deringham sat still smoking, and thinking rapidly.
The teamster, who made no answer, shook the reins, and they went lurching over a horrible trail down the valley, while Miss Deringham delightedly breathed in the scent of the cedars and felt the lash of snow-chilled wind bring the blood to her face.
Forel adhered to his resolution, and it was more than an hour later when he returned to the subject as they sat, cigar in hand, on the verandah, watching the lights of the vessels blink across the inlet. "We are going to keep Miss Deringham as long as we can," he said. "She has no kinsfolk she thinks much of in England, and Hettie is very fond of her. Did I tell you that Thorne called upon her?"
Deringham, who had married into the Alton family, and figured as a legatee, was, with the exception of the disinherited, the nearest of kin, and it had been generally expected that Carnaby would fall to his daughter; but perhaps in an endeavour to treat both sides fairly, its dying owner had, in the face of his lawyer's protests, inserted one clause which, for financial reasons, rendered a second union between the houses of Alton and Deringham distinctly advisable.
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