Mr. Selincourt followed silently, and when Katherine first began to show him the furs he looked at them with an abstracted gaze, which showed his thoughts to be far away.  But his interest grew in the beautiful things after a time, and he selected with a judgment and discretion which showed that he knew very well what he was about.  When he had bought all that he required he turned away from them, and began to talk of the matter which was uppermost in his mind.

“Well, have you come to any decision about disposing of your land?” he asked.

“Yes,” answered Katherine, who was busy rearranging the pelts which Mr. Selincourt had rejected.  “We had a family consultation, and the majority settled the question, and decided that we did not want to sell, and that we had not sufficient reason for selling even if we had wanted it very much indeed.  Our business is paying very well, and there is no need to upset existing arrangements.”

Mr. Selincourt nodded his head thoughtfully, then he answered:  “I must say I think you have done wisely; although, of course, it is against my own interest to admit it, because I wanted to buy.  But it is a very hard life for a girl.”

“It will be easier in a few years, when Miles grows up; and he gets bigger and more capable every day.  Oh, I shall have a very easy time, I can assure you, when my brother is a man!” she said, with a laugh.

“I trust you will, and a good time too, for I am sure that no girl ever deserved it more than you do,” he replied warmly.  Then he went on:  “I had a very hard time myself when I was a young man, an experience so cruelly hard and wearing that sometimes I wonder that I did not lose faith and hope entirely.”

“But don’t you think that faith and hope are given to us in proportion to our need of them?” asked Katherine, a little unsteadily.  Her heart was beating with painful throbs, for she guessed only too well to what period of his life Mr. Selincourt was referring.

“Perhaps so.  Yes, indeed I think it must be so, otherwise I don’t see how I could have pulled through.  I have recalled a good deal about that time since I have been here at Roaring Water Portage, and have seen how you have had to work, and to sacrifice yourself for the good of others; and I have often thought that I should like to tell you the story of my struggle.  Would you care to hear it?”

“Yes, very much,” Katherine answered faintly, although, much as she wished to know all about it, she dreaded hearing the story of her father’s wrong-doing told by other lips than his own.

“When I was a very young man I was clerk in a Bristol business house, taking a good salary, and, as I believed, with an unblemished character.  My father was dependent on me, and two young sisters, and I was rather proud of being, as it were, the keystone of the home.  Then one day an old friend of my father’s came to see me, and paid me fifty pounds, which he said he had owed to my father for twenty years—­a gambling debt.  He begged and implored me to say no word about it to anyone, especially to my father.”