"Does one usually renew a chance acquaintance made with a packer in the bush?" "It would depend a good deal on the packer," said Barbara, quietly. "Now this country is----" There was a trace of dryness in Brooke's smile. "You were going to say a democratic one. That, of course, might to some extent explain the anomaly." "No," said Barbara, sharply, with a very faint flush of color in her face, "I was not. You ought to know that, too. Explanations are occasionally odious, and almost always difficult, but both Major Hume and his daughter invited you to their house if you were ever in England." "The Major may have felt himself tolerably safe in making that offer," said Brooke, reflectively. "You see, I am naturally acquainted with my fellow Briton's idiosyncrasies." The girl looked at him with a little sparkle in her eyes. "I do not know why you are adopting this attitude, or assigning one to me," she said. "Did we ever attempt to patronize you, and if we had done, is there any reason why you should take the trouble to resent it?" Brooke laughed softly. "I scarcely think I could afford to resent a kindness, however it was offered; but there is a point you don't quite seem to have grasped. How could I be certain you had remembered me?" The girl smiled a little. "Your own powers of recollection might have furnished a standard of comparison." Brooke looked at her steadily. "The sharpness of the memory depends upon the effect the object one wishes to recollect produced upon one's mind," he said. "I should, of course, have known you at once had it been twenty years hence." The girl turned to her programme, for now she had induced him to abandon his reticence his candor was almost disconcerting. "Well," she said. "Tell me what you have been doing. You have left the ranch?" Brooke nodded and glanced at the hand he laid on his knee, which, as the girl saw, was still ingrained and hard. "Road-making for one thing," he said. "Chopping trees, quarrying rock, and following other useful occupations of the kind. They are, one presumes, healthy and necessary, but I did not find any of them especially remunerative." "And now?" Brooke's face, as she did not fail to notice, hardened suddenly, and he felt an unpleasant embarrassment as he met her eyes. He had decided that he was fully warranted in taking any steps likely to lead to the recovery of the dollars he had been robbed of, but he was sensible that the only ones he had found convenient would scarcely commend themselves to his companion. There was also no ignoring the fact that he would very much have preferred her approbation. "At present I am surveying, though I cannot, of course, become a surveyor," he said. "The legislature of this country has placed that out of the question."