Osborne was sitting on his veranda¹ one hot evening while Ruth reclined in a basket-chair, glancing at him thoughtfully. Of late she had felt that she did not know her father as well as she ought: there was a reserve about him which she had failed to penetrate². He had treated her with indulgent kindness and had humored her every wish since she came to him; but before that there had been a long interval³, during which he had sent her no word, and these years had obviously left their mark on him. She felt compassionate⁴ and somewhat guilty. So far, she had been content to be petted and made much of, taking all and giving nothing. It was time there should be a change.  
Osborne was of medium height and spare figure, and slightly lame⁵ in one foot. On the whole, his appearance was pleasing; though he was not of the type his daughter associated with the successful business man. There was a hint of imaginative dreaminess in his expression, and his face was seamed with lines and wrinkles that spoke⁶ of troubles borne, Ruth had heard him described as headstrong and romantic in his younger days, but he was now philosophically⁷ acquiescent⁸, and marked by somewhat ironical⁹ humor. She wondered what stern experiences had extinguished his youthful fire.
 
“Aynsley was talking to me a few days ago,” she said. “I understand that he means to take charge of the Canadian mill.”
 
“Then I suppose you applauded his decision. In fact, I wonder whether he arrived at it quite unassisted? The last time Clay mentioned the matter he told me the young fool didn’t seem able to make up his mind.”
 
Ruth grew somewhat uneasy beneath his amused glance. Her father was shrewd, and she was not prepared to acknowledge that she had influenced Aynsley.
 
“But don’t you think Aynsley’s right?” she asked.
 
“Oh, yes; in a sense. We admire industrial enterprise, and on the whole that’s good; but I’ve sometimes thought that our bush ranchers and prospectors¹⁰, who, while assisting in it, keep a little in advance of civilized¹¹ progress, show sound judgment¹². It’s no doubt proper to turn the beauty of our country into money and deface it with mining dumps and factory stacks; but our commercial system’s responsible for a good deal of ugliness, moral and physical.”
 
The girl was accustomed to his light irony¹³, and was sometimes puzzled to determine how far he was serious.
 
“But you are a business man,” she said.
 
“That’s true. I’ve suffered for it; but it doesn’t follow that our methods are much better because I’ve practised them.”
 
“Where did you first meet Aynsley’s father?” Ruth asked. She preferred personal to abstract topics.
 
Osborne smiled reminiscently.
 
“At a desolate¹⁴ settlement in Arizona a number of years ago. The Southern Pacific had lately reached the coast, and I was traveling West without a ticket. When it was unavoidable I walked; but railroad hands were more sympathetic in those days, and I came most of the way from Omaha inside and sometimes underneath¹⁵ the freight cars. Down under them was a dusty position in the dry belts.”
 
Glancing round from the pretty wooden house, which had been furnished without thought of cost, across the wide stretch of lawn, where a smart gardener was guiding a gasoline mower¹⁶, Ruth found it hard to imagine her father stealing a ride on a freight train. But another thought struck her.
 
“Where was I then?” she asked.
 
“With your aunt, or perhaps you had just gone to school. I can’t fix the exact time,” Osborne answered unguardedly; and the girl was filled with a confused sense of love and gratitude¹⁷.
 
The school was expensive, and her mother’s relatives were by no means rich, but she knew that her father had been the recipient¹⁸ of a small sum yearly under somebody’s will. It looked as if he had turned it all over for her benefit while he faced stern poverty.
 
Ruth impulsively¹⁹ pulled her chair nearer to her father, and her cool little fingers closed over one of his big hands.
 
“I understand now,” she said softly, “why there are lines on your forehead and you sometimes look worn. Your life must have been very hard.”
 
“Oh, it had its brighter side,” Osborne answered lightly. “Well, Clay was also engaged in beating his passage, and I found him enjoying a long drink from the locomotive tank. We were confronted with the problem how to cross about a hundred miles of arid²⁰ desert on a joint²¹ capital of two dollars. Clay got over the first difficulty by making a water-bag out of some railroad rubber sheeting which he borrowed, while I went round the settlement in search of provisions. I got some, though prices were ruinously high, and at midnight we hid beside the track, waiting for a freight train to pull out. The brakemen had a trick of looking round the cars before they made a start. Though the days were blazing hot, the nights were cold, and we shivered as we lay behind a clump²² of cacti²³ near the wheels. A man almost trod on us as he ran along the line, but just afterward²⁴ the engine bell rang, and Clay sprang up to push back one of the big sliding doors while I held the food and water. The runners were stiff, the train began to move; when he opened the door a few inches I had to trot²⁵; and by the time he could crawl through, it was too late for me to get up. Then, with a hazy²⁶ recollection that he had a long way to go, I threw the food and water into the car.”
 
“That was just like you!” Ruth exclaimed with a flush of pride.
 
“I imagine it was largely due to absence of mind. I felt very sorry for myself when I stood between the ties and watched the train vanish into the dark. What made it worse, was that of the joint two dollars only fifty cents was his.”
 
“When did you meet him again?”
 
“Several years afterward in San Francisco. He seemed to be prospering²⁸, and my luck had not been good. Through him, I entered the service of the Alaska Commercial Company. That, of course, was before the Klondyke rush, and the A.C.C. ruled the frozen North.”
 
“It was in Alaska that you were first fortunate, wasn’t it? You have never told me much about the mine you found.”
 
Osborne looked as if the recollection was unpleasant, but he saw that she was interested, and he generally indulged her. Though she believed in and was inclined to idealize him, Ruth was forced to admit that there was nothing in his appearance to suggest the miner. His light summer clothes were chosen with excellent taste, and there was a certain fastidiousness in his appearance and manners which was hardly in keeping with his adventurous²⁹ past.
 
“Well,” he said, “it was an unlucky mine from the beginning—and I was not the first to find it. I had been some years in the company’s service when I was sent as agent to one of their factories. It was situated

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