“Better not talk like that,” interrupted Anderson in a clear, resolute voice.  “It won’t do any good.  Look here, father!  Suppose you give up this kind of life, and settle down.  I’m ready to give you an allowance, and look after you.  Your health is bad.  To speak the truth, this mine business sounds to me pretty shady.  Cut it all!  I’ll put you with decent people, who’ll look after you.”

The eyes of the two men met; Anderson’s insistently bright, McEwen’s wavering and frowning.  The June sunshine came into the small room through a striped and battered blind, illuminating the rough planks of which it was built, the “cuts” from illustrated papers that were pinned upon them, the scanty furniture, and the untidy bed.  Anderson’s head and shoulders were in a full mellowed light; he held himself with an unconscious energy, answering to a certain force of feeling within; a proud strength and sincerity expressed itself through every detail of attitude and gesture; yet perhaps the delicacy, or rather sensibility, mingling with the pride, would have been no less evident to a seeing eye.  There was Highland blood in him, and a touch therefore of the Celtic responsiveness, the Celtic magnetism.  The old man opposite to him in shadow, with his back to the light, had a crouching dangerous look.  It was as though he recognised something in his son for ever lost to himself; and repulsed it, half enviously, half malignantly.

But he did not apparently resent Anderson’s proposal.  He said sulkily:  “Oh, I dessay you’d like to put me away.  But I’m not doddering yet.”

All the same he listened in silence to the plan that Anderson developed, puffing the while at the pipe which he had made Mrs. Ginnell give him.

“I shan’t stay on this side,” he said, at last, decidedly.  “There’s a thing or two that might turn up agin me—­and fellows as ’ud do me a bad turn if they come across me—­dudes, as I used to know in Dawson City.  I shan’t stay in Canada.  You can make up your mind to that.  Besides, the winter’ud kill me!”

Anderson accordingly proposed San Francisco, or Los Angeles.  Would his father go for a time to a Salvation Army colony near Los Angeles?  Anderson knew the chief officials—­capital men, with no cant about them.  Fruit farming—­a beautiful climate—­care in sickness—­no drink—­as much work or as little as he liked—­and all expenses paid.

McEwen laughed out—­a short sharp laugh—­at the mention of the Salvation Army.  But he listened patiently, and at the end even professed to think there might be something in it.  As to his own scheme, he dropped all mention of it.  Yet Anderson was under no illusion; there it lay sparkling, as it were, at the back of his sly wolfish eyes.

“How in blazes could you take me down?” muttered McEwen—­“Thought you was took up with these English swells.”

“I’m not taken up with anything that would prevent my looking after you,” said Anderson rising.  “You let Mrs. Ginnell attend to you—­get the leg well—­and we’ll see.”