"Poor Jack.

You surely remember he is lying ill ?" "It is especially inconvenient just now," said Townshead querulously.
"It has also been a sore point with me that a son of mine should hire himself out as a labourer.

I am sorry I let him go, the more so because the work upon the ranch is getting too much for me." Nellie Townshead said nothing, though she sighed as she pictured the young lad, who had been stricken by rheumatic fever as a result of toiling waist-deep in icy, water, lying uncared for in the mining camp amidst the snows of Caribou.

She did not, however, remind her father that it was she who had in the meanwhile done most of the indispensable work upon the ranch, and Townshead would not in any case have believed her, for he had a fine capacity for deceiving himself.
In place of it she spread out some masculine garments about the stove and coloured a trifle when her father glanced at her inquiringly.

"The creek must be running high and Mr.Alton and his partner will be very wet," she said.