“That must be our alighting-place, and I am not sure how we are to get on,” he said.  “It is, I understand, a long way to Somasco, and when we get there I really do not know whether we shall find any accommodation suitable for you.  It might have been better if you had gone on to our friends, the Fords, at Vancouver.”

Alice Deringham laughed a little.  “I don’t think you need worry.  Mr. Alton will, no doubt, take us in,” she said.  “A little primitive barbarity would not be unpleasant as a novelty.”

A trace of something very like anger crept into Deringham’s eyes.  It was not very perceptible, for he seldom showed much of what he felt, but his daughter noticed it.  “It is somewhat unfortunate that we shall probably have to avail ourselves of the young man’s hospitality,” he said.  “You understand, my dear, that he is a kinsman of your own, and, unless he can be persuaded to relinquish his claim, the owner of Carnaby.  Still, I have hopes of coming to terms with him.  The charges upon the land are very burdensome.”

Alice Deringham’s face grew a trifle scornful.  “You will do your best,” she said.  “The thought of one of these half-civilized axemen living at Carnaby is almost distressful to me.  In fact, I feel a curious dislike to the man even before I have seen him.”

There was another hoot of the whistle, a little station grew larger down the track, and here and there a wooden house peeped out amidst the slowly-flitting trees.  Then the cars stopped with a jerk, and Miss Deringham stepped down from the platform.  Her first glance showed her long ranks of climbing pines, with a great white peak silhouetted hard and sharp above them against the blue.  Then she became conscious of the silver mist streaming ethereally athwart the sombre verdure from the river hollow, and that a new and pungent smell cut through the odours of dust and creosote which reeked along the track.  It came from a cord of cedar-wood piled up close by, and she found it curiously refreshing.  The drowsy roar of the river mingled with the panting of the locomotive pump, but there was a singular absence of life and movement in the station until the door of the baggage-car slid open, and her father sprang aside as her trunks were shot out on to the platform.  A bag or two of something followed them, the great engines panted, and the dusty cars went on again, while it dawned upon Alice Deringham that her last hold upon civilization had gone, and she was left to her own resources in a new and somewhat barbarous land.

There were no obsequious porters to collect her baggage, which lay where it had alighted with one trunk gaping open, while a couple of men in blue shirts and soil-stained jeans leaned upon the neighbouring fence watching her with mild curiosity.  Her father addressed another one somewhat differently attired who stood in the door of the office.

“There is a hotel here, but they couldn’t take you in,” said the man.  “Party of timber-right prospectors came along, and they’re kind of frolicsome.  They might find you a berth on the verandah, but I don’t know that it would suit the lady.  It mixes things up considerable when you bring a woman.”