Part 9 (1/2)

”Yes,” said the lawyer. ”Colonel Barrington does not dispute it, though I am of opinion that he might have done so under one clause of the will. I do not think we need discuss his motives.”

Winston moistened his lips with his tongue, and his lips quivered a little. He had hitherto been an honest man, and now it was impossible for him to take the money. It, however, appeared equally impossible to reveal his ident.i.ty and escape the halter, and he felt that the dead man had wronged him horribly. He was ent.i.tled at least to safety by way of compensation, for by pa.s.sing as Courthorne he would avoid recognition as Winston.

”Still I do not know how I have offended Colonel Barrington,” he said.

”I would sooner,” said the lawyer, ”not go into that. It is, I fancy, fifteen years since Colonel Barrington saw you, but he desired me to find means of tracing your Canadian record, and did not seem pleased with it. Nor, at the risk of offending you, could I deem him unduly prejudiced.”

”In fact,” said Winston dryly, ”this man who has not seen me for fifteen years is desirous of withholding what is mine from me at almost any cost.”

The lawyer nodded. ”There is nothing to be gained by endeavoring to controvert it. Colonel Barrington is also, as you know, a somewhat determined gentleman.”

Winston laughed, for he was essentially a stubborn man, and felt little kindliness towards any one connected with Courthorne, as the Colonel evidently was.

”I fancy I am not entirely unlike him in that respect,” he said. ”What you have told me makes me the more determined to follow my own inclination. Is there any one else at Silverdale prejudiced against me?”

The lawyer fell into the trap. ”Miss Barrington, of course, takes her brother's view, and her niece would scarcely go counter to them. She must have been a very young girl when she last saw you, but from what I know of her character I should expect her to support the Colonel.”

”Well,” said Winston, ”I want to think over the thing. We will talk again to-morrow. You would require me to establish my ident.i.ty, any way?”

”The fact that a famous inquiry agent has traced your movements down to a week or two ago, and told me where to find you, will render that simple,” said the lawyer dryly.

Winston sat up late that night turning over the papers the lawyer left him and thinking hard. It was evident that in the meanwhile he must pa.s.s as Courthorne, but as the thought of taking the money revolted him, the next step led to the occupation of the dead man's property.

The a.s.sumption of it would apparently do n.o.body a wrong, while he felt that Courthorne had taken so much from him that the farm at Silverdale would be a very small reparation. It was not, he saw, a great inheritance, but one that in the right hands could be made profitable, and Winston, who had fought a plucky fight with obsolete and worthless implements and indifferent teams, felt that he could do a great deal with what was, as it were, thrust upon him at Silverdale. It was not avarice that tempted him, though he knew he was tempted now, but a longing to find a fair outlet for his energies, and show what, once given the chance that most men had, he could do. He had stinted himself and toiled almost as a beast of burden, but now he could use his brains in place of wringing the last effort out of overtaxed muscle. He had also during the long struggle lost to some extent his clearness of vision, and only saw himself as a lonely man fighting for his own hand with fate against him. Now, when prosperity was offered him, it seemed but folly to stand aside when he could stretch out a strong hand and take it.

During the last hour he sat almost motionless, the issue hung in the balance, and he laid himself down still undecided. Still, he had lived long in primitive fas.h.i.+on in close touch with the soil, and sank, as most men would not have done, into restful sleep. The sun hung red above the rim of the prairie when he awakened, and going down to breakfast found the lawyer waiting for him.

”You can tell Colonel Barrington I'm coming to Silverdale,” he said.

The lawyer looked at him curiously. ”Would there be any use in asking you to reconsider?”

Winston laughed. ”No,” he said. ”Now, I rather like the way you talked to me, and, if it wouldn't be disloyalty to the Colonel, I should be pleased if you would undertake to put me in due possession of my property.”

He said nothing further, and the lawyer sat down to write Colonel Barrington.

”Mr. Courthorne proves obdurate,” he said. ”He is, however, by no means the type of man I expected to find, and I venture to surmise that you will eventually discover him to be a less undesirable addition to Silverdale than you are at present inclined to fancy.”

CHAPTER VIII

WINSTON COMES TO SILVERDALE

There was warmth and brightness in the cedar-boarded general room of Silverdale Grange, and most of the company gathered there basked in it contentedly after their drive through the bitter night. Those who came from the homesteads lying farthest out had risked frost-nipped hands and feet, for when Colonel Barrington held a levee at the Grange n.o.body felt equal to refusing his invitation. Neither scorching heat nor utter cold might excuse compliance with the wishes of the founder of Silverdale, and it was not until Dane, the big middle-aged bachelor, had spoken very plainly, that he consented to receive his guests in time of biting frost dressed otherwise than as they would have appeared in England.

Dane was the one man in the settlement who dare remonstrate with its ruler, but it was a painful astonishment to the latter when he said in answer to one invitation, ”I have never been frost-bitten, sir, and I stand the cold well, but one or two of the lads are weak in the chest, and this climate was never intended for bare-shouldered women. Hence, if I come, I shall dress myself to suit it.”

Colonel Barrington stared at him for almost a minute, and then shook his head. ”Have it your own way,” he said. ”Understand that in itself I care very little for dress, but it is only by holding fast to every traditional nicety we can prevent ourselves sinking into Western barbarism, and I am horribly afraid of the thin end of the wedge.”

Dane having gained his point said nothing further, for he was one of the wise and silent men who know when to stop, and that evening he sat in a corner watching his leader thoughtfully, for there was anxiety in the Colonel's face. Barrington sat silent near the ample hearth whose heat would scarcely have kept water from freezing but for the big stove, and disdaining the dispensation made his guests, he was clad conventionally, though the smooth black fabric clung about him more tightly than it had once been intended to do. His sister stood, with the stamp of a not wholly vanished beauty still clinging to her gentle face, talking to one or two matrons from outlying farms, and his niece by a little table turning over Eastern photographs with a few young girls. She, too, wore black in deference to the Colonel's taste, which was somber, and the garment she had laughed at as a compromise left uncovered a narrow strip of ivory shoulder and enhanced the polished whiteness of her neck. A slender string of pearls gleamed softly on the satiny skin, but Maud Barrington wore no other adornment, and did not need it. She had inherited the Courthorne comeliness, and the Barringtons she sprang from on her father's side had always borne the stamp of distinction.