"I am sorry, sir," he said when he returned to the table, "but I am ashamed to say my boy has developed a terrible faculty for telling the most deliberate untruths, and I have to do my best to check him. He seems to take a perfect delight in inventing stories without a shadow of foundation, and in sticking to them at all costs." "I believe the child’s version was the right one," said Judge Simmons to himself as he motored back to Lanthorne Abbey. "Why should Field be so anxious to demonstrate that orange streaks were such very ordinary things?" Suddenly he sat up and gave a low exclamation. "What if he wished to prove to me that Good Hope mine could not possibly be the same as Wild Goat Gully? That’s a question which opens out some interesting answers. I guess I’ll make some enquiries when I get back to California again." *CHAPTER IV* *Timothy’s Three Friends* Madelaine Power wandered along the shore idly watching the waves as they came tumbling in, their white crests curling in a succession of long feathery lines, until with a roar and a hiss they were flung upon the beach, spreading themselves out like great fans of foam upon the shingle. No figure but her own was to be seen on the narrow pebbly strip, which ran like a yellow ribbon between the foot of the cliff and the incoming tide. No sound was to be heard save the monotonous music of the breakers, and an occasional wild cry as a stray sea-gull circled above her head. Madelaine gave a little shiver as her eye followed the desolate track. "Only eleven years ago this month since Gerald and I trod this very shore," she said. "Only eleven years, and yet what a lifetime it seems! Truly much of it has been to me a sad and solitary way. It has been heavy walking, and most of it against the wind!" She stood for a moment gazing at the coast-line, up which a sea-mist was slowly travelling, blotting out the distant view of ocean and headland. "Just as my troubles have blotted out my sun," she thought to herself, as she morbidly let her mind dwell on the dark days of the past. It was not strange that her spirit failed her at times, for the road had indeed been toilsome to her young feet. The only child of a struggling country doctor, and left an orphan at the age of seventeen, she had early engaged in a hard fight for existence, earning a scanty livelihood by teaching in the neighbouring town. It was there that the girl made the acquaintance of the handsome young surveyor whose friendship made so great a difference to her lonely lot. Small wonder was it, when he asked her to be his wife, that she should feel as if a new and glorious era had suddenly dawned. No matter that her home was to be henceforth in the unknown West. The heart’s love of her strong and generous nature had been given wholly to him whom she would gladly have followed to the ends of the earth.