If the juniper-twigs had yielded it would have made a great difference to him as well as his daughter.

He sat down again presently and stared at the valley, seeing nothing as he remembered that Alton of Somasco might go back to the ranges again, and then with an effort shook the fancies from him.

They were not wholesome for a man hemmed in by difficulties as he was then.
In the meanwhile his daughter stood with one hand on the verandah balustrade, listening to the song of the river which came sonorously through the shadows of the bush.

She also breathed in the scent of the firs, and found it pleasant, but it was instinctively she did so, for her thoughts were also busy.

Alice Deringham had noticed her father's fits of abstraction as well as the anxiety in his face, and had no great difficulty in connecting them with the loss of Carnaby.