"Still, you couldn't expect much from that kind of man.
Killed him for a hundred dollars in his bed." "Yes, sir," said the first speaker.

"And he didn't get all of them.
The man was his own cousin, and too sick to do anything.

Well, thank God, we haven't got many vermin of that kind in the Dominion." Deringham, who had picked up the telegram, let it slip from his fingers as he rose, and the girl wondered at the change in him.

He seemed to have grown suddenly haggard, and the lines upon his face were much more apparent than usual.
"You will excuse me a minute," he said, and the girl noticed the curious deliberation of his movements and the stoop in his shoulders as he crossed the saloon.
Deringham had faced more than one crisis in the past, and the difference in his pose might not have attracted a stranger's notice, though it was evident to his daughter that something had troubled him.
Why he should be so disturbed by the news of Alton's condition she could not quite see, but that appeared of the less importance, because she was endeavouring to evade the question why the telegram should also have caused her a curious consternation.

He was a half-taught rancher, and she had been accustomed to the homage of men of mark and polish in England--but it was with something approaching dismay she heard that the man who had supplanted her father was, though she could scarcely contemplate the possibility, dying.
In the meanwhile Deringham walked into the bar, and leaned somewhat heavily upon the counter as he asked for a glass of brandy.