His visit had been a failure, and his employers must develop the mine without the help of the latest machines. He doubted if they could finance the undertaking until they struck the vein. Then it looked as if he had been rash to reject Sir James's offer. He had thrown away a chance of winning prosperity and perhaps fame in England, for he knew he had some talent and he was ambitious. Instead he had chosen exhausting labor and stern self-denial in the wilds. The life had some compensations, but they were not very obvious then. It was, however, too late for regrets; he had chosen and must be content, and putting down the newspaper he was trying to read, he went to bed. Two days later he sat in the garden of a new summer hotel on the shore of Lake Huron. A pine forest rolled down to the water past the pretty wooden building, and the air in the shade was cool and sweet with resinous smells. The lake glittered, smooth as glass, in the hot sun, but here and there a wandering breeze traced a dark-blue line across the placid surface. Along the beach the shadows of the pines floated motionless. Thirlwell smoked and meditated on the errand that had brought him to the hotel. The clerk had told him that Miss Strange was on the beach, but he had not seen her yet and felt some curiosity about the girl whom he had arranged to meet. They had corresponded and he had brought a photograph he thought she would like to see, but on the whole he would sooner she had not asked for the interview. She might find it painful to hear the story he had to tell, and the thing would require some tact, more perhaps than he had. In the meantime he wondered what she was like. Her letters indicated a cultivated mind, and he knew she had a post at a Toronto school; but one could not expect much from the daughter of the broken-down prospector he had met in the North. Strange had worked spasmodically at the mine, where he was employed because labor was scarce. He was not a good workman, and when he had earned a small sum generally bought provisions and went off into the bush to re-locate a silver lode he claimed to have found when he was young. He came back ragged and disappointed, and when liquor could be got indulged freely before he resumed his work.