"And on this particular day--when we owe you so much--it is more than disagreeable to myself.

But I have no choice.
By some extraordinary chance, with which I beg you to believe my own will has had nothing to do, I have become acquainted with something--something that concerns you privately--something that I fear will be a great shock to you." Anderson stood still.
"What can you possibly mean ?" he said, in growing amazement.
"I was accosted the night before last, as I was strolling along the railway line, by a man I had never seen before, a man who--pardon me, it is most painful to me to seem to be interfering with anyone's private affairs--who announced himself as"-- the speaker's nervous stammer intervened before he jerked out the words--"as your father!" "As my father?
Somebody must be mad!" said Anderson quietly.

"My father has been dead ten years." "I am afraid there is a mistake.

The man who spoke to me is aware that you suppose him dead--he had his own reasons, he declares, for allowing you to remain under a misconception; he now wishes to reopen communications with you, and to my great regret, to my indignation, I may say he chose me--an entire stranger--as his intermediary.

He seems to have watched our party all the way from Winnipeg, where he first saw you, casually, in the street.