Wyllard smiled. "Then I'm 'most afraid there'd be the biggest kind of smash."
After that they talked of other matters of no great consequence, for both of them were conscious of the necessity for a certain reticence; and when they reached the homestead Agatha joined Mrs. Hastings, while Wyllard pitched the hay off the waggon. He, however, came in to supper presently with about half of the others, and they all sat down together in the long, barely furnished room. Wyllard seemed unusually animated, and drew Mrs. Hastings into a bout of whimsical badinage, but he looked up sharply when, by and bye, a beat of hoofs rose from the prairie.
"Somebody's riding in; I wonder what he wants?" he said. "I certainly don't expect anybody."
The drumming of hoofs rang more sharply through the open windows, for the sod was hard and dry. Then it broke off, and Agatha saw Wyllard start as a man came into the room. He was a little, thick-set man with a weather-darkened face, dressed in rather old blue serge, and he looked and walked like a seaman. In another moment or two he stood still, looking about him, and Wyllard's lips set tight. A little thrill of disconcertion ran through Agatha, for she felt she knew what this stranger's errand must be.
Then Wyllard rose, and walked towards the man with outstretched hand.
"Sit right down and get some supper. You'll want it if you have ridden in from the railroad," he said. "We'll talk afterwards."
The stranger nodded. "I'm from Vancouver," he said; "had quite a lot of trouble tracing you."
He sat down, and Wyllard, who sent a man out to take his horse, went back to his seat, but he was rather silent during the rest of the meal. When it was over he asked Mrs. Hastings to excuse him, and leading the stranger into a smaller room pulled out two chairs and laid a cigar box on the table.
The seaman fumbled in his pocket, and taking out a slip of wood handed it to his companion.
"That's what I came to bring you," he said quietly.
Wyllard's eyes grew very grave as he gazed at the thing. It was a slip of willow which will grow close up to the limits of the eternal ice, and it bore a rude representation of the British ensign union down, which signifies "In distress." Besides this there were one or two indecipherable words scratched on it, and three common names rather more clearly cut. Wyllard recognised every one of them.