A brakeman descended, the conductor strode stiffly to the telegrapher's window, two trunks came out of the baggage car, and a tall man of fifty alighted and was folded into Sheila's welcoming arms. For a moment the two stood thus, while the passengers smiled sympathetically. Then the man held Sheila off at arm's length and looked searchingly at her. "Crying?" he said. "What a welcome!" "Oh, daddy!" said Sheila. In this moment she was very near to telling him what had happened to her on the day of her arrival at Lazette, but she felt that it was impossible with him looking at her; she could not at a blow cast a shadow over the joy of his first day in the country where, henceforth, he was to make his home. And so she stood sobbing softly on his shoulder while he, aware of his inability to cope with anything so mysterious as a woman's tears, caressed her gently and waited patiently for her to regain her composure. "Then nothing happened to you after all," he laughed, patting her cheeks. "Nothing, in spite of my croaking." "Nothing," she answered. The opportunity was gone now; she was committed irrevocably to her secret. "You like it here? Duncan has made himself agreeable?" "It is a beautiful country, though a little lonesome after--after Albany. I miss my friends, of course. But Duncan's sister has done her best, and I have been able to get along." The engine bell clanged and they stood side by side as the train pulled slowly away from the platform. Langford solemnly waved a farewell to it. "This is the moment for which I have been looking for months," he said, with what, it seemed to Sheila, was almost a sigh of relief. He turned to her with a smile. "I will look after the baggage," he said, and leaving her he approached the station agent and together they examined the trunks which had come out of the baggage car. Sheila watched him while he engaged in this task. His face seemed a trifle drawn; he had aged much during the month that she had been separated from him. The lines of his face had grown deeper; he seemed, now that she saw him at a distance, to be care-worn--tired. She had heard people call him a hard man; she knew that business associates had complained of what they were pleased to call his "sharp methods"; it had even been hinted that his "methods" were irregular. It made no difference to her, however, what people thought of him, or what they said of him, he had been a kind and indulgent parent to her and she supposed that in business it was everybody's business to look sharply after their own interests. For there were jealous people everywhere; envy stalks rampant through the world; failure cavils at mediocrity, mediocrity sneers at genius. And Sheila had always considered her father a genius, and the carping of those over whom her father had ridden roughshod had always sounded in her ears like tributes.