Having quarrelled with his relatives, he had come out with only a few pounds and had promptly set about earning a living with his hands. When he had been in the country several years, however, a friend of the family had sent him a small sum, and the young man had made a judicious use of the money. The lot he bought outside a wooden town doubled in value, and the share he took in a new orchard paid him well; but he had held aloof from the cities, and his only recklessness had been prospecting journeys into the wilderness. Prospecting for minerals is at once an art and a gamble, but even in this direction, in which he had had keen wits against him, Vane had held his own; but there was one side of life with which he was practically unacquainted. There are no social amenities on the rangeside or in the bush, and women are scarce. Vane had lived in Spartan simplicity; his passions had remained unstirred, and now he was seven-and-twenty, sound and vigorous of body and, as a rule, level of head. At length, however, there was to be a change. He had earned an interlude of leisure, and he meant to enjoy it, without, as he prudently determined, making a fool of himself. Presently Carroll took his pipe from his mouth. "Are you going ashore to the show to-night?" he asked. "Yes," said Vane lazily. "It's a long while since I've struck another entertainment of any kind, and that yellow-haired mite's dancing is one of the prettiest things I've seen." "You've been twice already," Carroll pointed out. "The girl with the blue eyes sings her first song rather well." "I think so," Vane agreed with a significant absence of embarrassment. "In this case a good deal depends upon the singing--the interpretation, don't they call it? The thing's on the border, and I've struck places where they'd have made it gross; but the girl only brought out the mischief. Strikes me she didn't see there was anything else in it." "That's curious, considering the crowd she goes about with," Carroll suggested. "Aren't you cultivating a critical faculty?" Vane disregarded the ironical question. "She's Irish; that accounts for a good deal." He paused and looked thoughtful. "If I knew how to do it, I'd like to give the child who dances five dollars. It must be a tough life, and her mother--the woman at the piano--looks ill. I wonder why they came to a place like this?" "Struck a cold streak at Nanaimo, the storekeeper told me," Carroll replied. "Anyway, since we're to start at sun-up, I'm staying here." Then he smiled. "Has it struck you that your attendance in the front seats is liable to misconception?" His companion rose without answering and dropped into the canoe. Thrusting her off, he drove the craft towards the wharf with vigorous strokes, and Carroll shook his head whimsically as he watched him. "Anybody except myself would conclude that he was waking up at last," he said.