Along the beach the shadows of the pines floated motionless.
Thirlwell smoked and meditated on the errand that had brought him to the hotel.

The clerk had told him that Miss Strange was on the beach, but he had not seen her yet and felt some curiosity about the girl whom he had arranged to meet.

They had corresponded and he had brought a photograph he thought she would like to see, but on the whole he would sooner she had not asked for the interview.

She might find it painful to hear the story he had to tell, and the thing would require some tact, more perhaps than he had.
In the meantime he wondered what she was like.

Her letters indicated a cultivated mind, and he knew she had a post at a Toronto school; but one could not expect much from the daughter of the broken-down prospector he had met in the North.