It was an incomplete explanation. He had inherited the Englishman's reticence, which forbade him to point out that his father sprang from an old family of standing and had, for some reason which his son had never learned, quarreled bitterly with his English relatives. Coming to Canada, he had married and taken up the bush life on a small and unremunerative ranch, where he had died and left his widow and his son badly provided for. "Thank you," responded Nasmyth; and Lisle supposed it was in recognition of the fact that he would hardly have furnished even those few particulars to one whom he regarded as a stranger. "To reciprocate, a few words will make clear all there is to know about me. English public school, Oxford afterward--didn't take a degree. Spend most of my time in the country, though I make a few sporting trips abroad when I can afford it and have nothing better to do. That partly explains this journey. But I haven't tried to force your confidence, nor offered you mine, altogether casually." "So I supposed," returned Lisle. "It strikes me that since we got near the Gladwyne expedition's line of march we have both felt that some explanation is needed. To go back a little, when I met you in Victoria and you offered to join me in the trip, I agreed partly because I wanted an intelligent companion, but I had another reason. At first I supposed you wished to go because a journey through a rough and little-known country seems to appeal to one kind of Englishman, but I changed my mind when you showed your anxiety to get upon the Gladwyne party's trail." "You were right. I knew the Gladwynes in England; the one who died was an old and valued friend of mine. I could give you the history of their march, though I hardly think that's needful. You seem remarkably well acquainted with it." Lisle's face hardened. With the exception of one man, he knew more than anybody else about the fatal journey a party of four had made a year earlier through the region he and Nasmyth were approaching. "I am," he said. "There's a cause for it; but I'll ask you to tell me what you know." He threw more branches on the fire and a crackling blaze sprang aloft, forcing up the ragged spruce boughs out of the surrounding gloom. "This is the survivor's narrative. I heard it from his own lips more than once," began Nasmyth. "I dare say most of it's a kind of story that's not unusual in the North." "It's one that has been repeated with local variations over and over again. But go on."