“I must have told you of it at the time, for I was stopping with you. Yes, it was Brooke Lawton who christened the River Kingdom,—but she never returned, and I heard indirectly that she had gone abroad to study art. Come to think of it, she must be a grown woman now, at the rate time goes. All of which reminds me that I sent word that I would go to Miss Keith’s to-day; she wants counsel of some sort, about what I could not even surmise from her letter. As she is one of the good middle-aged women who always wish excuses made for every act, I will take her these grouse as an apology and tangible explanation as to my clothes and gun, and as she always insists that I should take a meal with her, you will not see me until supper-time. If you will tell José to dress and split the quail, I myself will broil them over the wood coals in your den, spitted on hickory forks. Metal should never touch wild fowl, but you of the younger generation do so grudge trouble and seem to have no capacity for detail,” and, half chiding, half laughing, Dr. Russell shouldered his beloved gun, picked up the grouse, smoothed the rumpled ruff of the cock bird, and started on the mile walk downhill to the West homestead, whistling. Robert Stead looked after him a moment, and then, calling the dogs to heel, started up the hillside in an opposite direction. Before him for a single instant stood the form of the young girl of the River Kingdom, as Dr. Russell had portrayed her, with arms full of gay leaves and vines that she had stripped from the hedges as she went, but as he reached her she vanished, and turning toward the river itself, he was half surprised to find it still moving as ceaselessly as ever. Love had mocked him long ago and motive eluded him, but the dog at his side touched his fingers with caressing tongue, and the River Kingdom still remained. CHAPTER II A BELATED FIRST CAUSE The West farm was on the upper of the two roads between Stonebridge and Gordon, at the point where a steep uphill grade paused, on a plateau of several hundred feet in length, as if to rest and take breath and allow those who travelled upon it to drink in the splendour of the river view before attempting the still steeper ascent beyond. Three generations of Wests had lived from this farm until, some forty years before, its hundred acres being all too small for the needs of modern push and life, the last young male of the family, a man of twenty odd, of tenacious mixed Scotch and New England stock, had gone to New York to follow a quicker game of dollars.