too good. Life together might be hard for both, and there was a touch of
pathos in his burning all the tender tokens that bound him to the past,
though it was ominous that he kept the whisky. He could, however, get as
much liquor as he wanted at the hotel; that is, if Sadie allowed it, but
there was some comfort in the thought that the girl was clever and firm.

Festing dismissed the matter, and when he reached his shack at the
bridge put the portrait on the table and sat down opposite. He felt that
he knew this girl, whom he had never met, very well. Something in her
look had cheered him when he had difficulties to overcome; he felt that
they were friends. She was calm and fearless and would face trouble with
the level glance he knew, although now and then, when the lamp flickered
in the draught, he had thought she smiled. They had been companions
on evenings when Charnock wanted to read the newspaper or the talk
had flagged. Sometimes the window and door were open and the smell of
parched grass came in; sometimes the stove was red-hot and the house
shook in the icy blast. Festing admitted that it was not altogether for
Charnock's society he had visited the homestead.

Then he began to puzzle about a likeness to somebody he knew. He
had remarked this before, but the likeness was faint and eluded him.
Lighting his pipe, he tried to concentrate his thoughts, and by and by
made an abrupt movement. He had it! When he was in British Columbia,
engaged on the construction of a section of the railroad that was
being built among the mountains, he met a young Englishman at a mining
settlement. The lad had been ill and was not strong enough to undertake
manual labor, which was the only occupation to be found in the
neighborhood. Moreover, he had lost his money, in consequence, Festing
gathered, of his trusting dangerous companions.