way off, and it was tolerably clear that Stirling, perhaps influenced
by something his daughter or Major Kinnaird had said, meant to offer
him promotion. Still, though he did not know exactly why, he shrank
from accepting any favor from Miss Stirling's father, and, besides
that, he had already pledged himself to Grenfell. He laid down the
letter and opened the second one. Out of this he took an order on one
of the H.B.C. settlement stores, dated at the Vancouver station. It
was marked duplicate, and read:

    "To Agent, Anson's Forks station:

    "Provide Mr. Weston with whatever he may require in the shape
    of blankets, provisions, and any sundries in your stock for a
    prospecting trip."

A sheet of paper had been laid beside it, and Weston's face flushed as
he read, "Won't you accept this with the good wishes of your late
companions?"

It was evidently from Miss Stirling, for it was a woman's writing, and
he did not think an Englishwoman would have said "Won't you," as she
had done. He could recognize the delicacy with which she had refrained
from offering him money, or even stipulating any definite sum in the
order, and it was evident that she had taken some trouble to arrange
the matter with the H. B. C. agent at Vancouver. The thing had been
done in kindness, and yet it hurt him. He could have accepted it more
readily from anybody else. On the other hand, he remembered that she
had known him only as a track-grader, and that he was, as a matter of
fact, nothing else. He could not send the order back without appearing
ungracious or disposed to assert that he was of her own station. Then
another thought struck him.

"I don't think they knew my name. They called me Clarence," he said.
"Somebody must have thought it worth while to write Cassidy."

He had forgotten his companions, and when Grenfell looked at him
inquiringly, he laughed.

"It's something I was thinking of," he said, handing the order across.
Grenfell gazed at it with unqualified satisfaction.

"This straightens everything out," he said.

"I'm not quite sure it does," returned Weston, dryly. "In fact in some
respects it rather complicates the thing. That, however, is a point
that doesn't concern you."

His companion, who appeared to concur in this, glanced with evident
regret at the six dollars which still lay beside him.

"If I'd known that the order was in the mail, the boys would have had
to carry me every rod of the way back to camp," he said. "It's not the
first time that I've been sorry I practiced economy."

Weston left him shortly afterward, and went back with the other man
toward the shanty.

"The chances seem too steep for you?" suggested Weston.

"Well, I guess he did strike that gold; but I shouldn't be too sure of
it. It's quite likely that he fancied the whole thing. You can't count
on the notions of that kind of man."

He broke off for a moment, and appeared to consider.

"There's another point. The old tank has no nerves left, and he's no
use on his legs. Guess, you'll have to carry him over the range."

Weston fancied that this was probable, and the track-grader, who
turned away to speak to another man, left him in a thoughtful mood.

CHAPTER VIII

IN THE RANGES

A month had passed when Weston stood one morning outside the tent he
scarcely expected that he or his comrade would sleep in again. It was
pitched beside a diminutive strip of boggy natural prairie under the
towering range, though the latter was then shrouded in sliding mist
out of which the climbing firs raised here and there a ragged spire or
somber branch. The smoke of the cooking-fire hung in heavy blue
wreaths about the tent, and a thick rain beat into the faces of the
men.

The few weeks they had spent in the wilderness had made a change in
them. Grenfell had clearer eyes and skin, and was steadier on his
legs, for he had slaked his thirst with river-water for some time now.
Weston was a little leaner, and his face was grimmer than it had been,
for the whimsical carelessness had faded out of it. Both of them were
dressed largely in rags, and their stout boots were rent; and they
were already very wet, though that was no great matter, as they were
used to it. There are a good many rivers among those ranges, and no
bridges. They were then glancing at the horse which was cropping the
harsh grass of the swamp. It was of the Cayuse Indian breed, and not
particularly valuable, but it could be sold for something if they
succeeded in taking it back to the settlements. This, however, did not
appear to Weston very probable.

"Short hobbles," suggested Grenfell. "There's grass enough to last
awhile, and it's likely that we'll strike this way back. It's a long
way to the settlements, and there'll be quite a load of provisions and
things to pack."

They had made a cache of most of their provisions the previous night,
after searching in vain for a route by which they could lead the horse
over the range in front of them; but Weston shook his head.

"No," he said, "we may not come back this way after all, and a horse
is pretty sure to get a hobble of any kind foul round something in the
bush. I can't have the beast held up to starve."

"Well," said Grenfell, "I guess you understand what leaving it loose
means?"

Weston did. He recognized that if they ever regained that valley they
would have to push on for the settlements through a most difficult
country, under a heavy load, and even then leave behind them many
things which might have ministered to their comfort. Still, he was
resolute.

"The beast could find its food somehow if we left it loose, and it's
quite probable that it would work down along the back trail to the
settlements when the grass round here gets scarce," he said. "In any
case we'll give it a chance for its life."

Grenfell made a sign of acquiescence.

"Have it your way. If we ever come back to this cache again, and I'm
played out, as I probably will be, you'll have the pleasure of packing
down everything we want."

Weston did not answer, but there was a little satisfied smile in his
eyes as he watched the horse wander away unhampered into the rain.
After this they sat down to a very simple meal. Then they strapped
their packs on their shoulders--a thick blanket each, a small bag of
flour, some salt pork and green tea, and, while Grenfell carried the
light ax, Weston slung a frying-pan, a kettle and a pannikin about
him, as well as a rifle, for there are black-tail deer in that
country, and they could not be sure that their provisions would last
the journey through. The prospector soon discovers how much a man can
do without, and it is a good deal more than men bred in the cities
would suppose. The oddments rattled and banged about Weston's
shoulders as he went up the steep slope through the thick timber; and
by the time they had cleared the latter, Grenfell was visibly
distressed, and both of them realized that their difficulties had
commenced.

Any one unaccustomed to the country would probably have considered the
devious march that they already had made arduous enough, but they had,
at least for the most part, followed the valleys and crossed only a
few low divides, and it was evident now that their way led close up to
the eternal snow. There was a rock scarp in front of them, up part of
which they went on their hands and knees. When they reached the summit
of this, the slightly more level strip along which they floundered was
strewn with shattered rock and gravel that had come down from the
heights above with the thaw in the spring; and it was with difficulty
that they made a mile an hour. The gold trail is usually long and
arduous; but the prospector is content to have it so, for once it is
made easier the poor man's day has gone. Then the men of the cities
set up their hydraulic monitors, or drive their adits, and the
free-lance who disdains to work for them rolls up his old blankets and
pushes out once again into the waste.

They made supper at sunset among the last of the dwindling pines; and
then lay awake shivering part of the night, for a nipping wind came
down from the snow, and they were very wet and cold. It rained again
the next day and most of the following one. Still, they spent the two
days crawling along the farther side of the range, for when they had
struggled through the snow in a rift between two peaks, a great wall
of rock that fell almost sheer cut them off from the next valley.
Somewhat to Weston's astonishment, Grenfell now showed little sign of
flagging. He seemed intent and eager; and when they stopped, gasping,
where the rock fell straight down beneath their feet to the thick
timber that climbed from a thread-like river, he sat down and gazed
steadily below him.

"They're hemlocks along that bend?" he asked, pointing to a ridge of
somber green that rose above the water.

"Yes," said Weston, "I think they are."

Grenfell straightened himself suddenly.

"My sight's not as good as yours, but I seemed to know they must be.
Can you make out any Douglas firs in the thicker timber?"

"Yes," said Weston, excitedly, "there's a spire or two higher than the
rest. You recognize the place?"

His companion sat still with signs of tension in his face, and it was
clear that he was racking his befogged brain. The few weeks of
abstinence and healthful toil had made a change in him, but one cannot
in that space of time get rid of the results of years of indulgence;
and under stress of excitement the man became confused and fanciful.

"I'm not sure. I'm trying to think," he said, laying a lean, trembling
hand on Weston's arm. "Did you never feel that there was something you
ought to recollect about a spot which you couldn't have seen before?"

Weston was in no mood to discuss questions of that kind, though the
curious sensation was not altogether unfamiliar to him.

"There's only one way you could have known there was hemlock yonder,"
he asserted.

Grenfell looked up at him with a dry smile.

"You have to remember that I have been up in the ranges several times.
Parts of them are very much alike."

After that Weston sat very still for several minutes, though he found
it exceedingly difficult. He had more than once during the last few
weeks doubted that Grenfell had ever found the quartz-reef at all, for
it seemed quite possible that he had, as the track-grader suggested,
merely fancied that he had done so, and the man's manner had borne out
that supposition. Cut off from the whisky, he had now and then fallen
into fits of morbid moodiness, during which he seemed very far from
sure about the gold. This had naturally occasioned Weston a good deal
of anxiety. He had thrown up his occupation and sunk his last dollar
in the venture, and the finding of the quartz-reef would, he commenced
to realize, open up to him alluring possibilities. At length his
companion spoke slowly.

"If the river runs across the valley to the opposite range a mile
higher, this is the way I came down when I found the gold," he said.

Weston scrambled to his feet. Floundering in haste along the edge of
the crag, he stopped some sixty yards farther on, with a little quiver
running through him. From that point he could see that the river ran
straight across to the opposite wall of rock. He flung up his arms
with an exultant shout. Then they went on eagerly when Grenfell joined
him.

"Yes," said the latter, when he had glanced below, "I must have seen
it the time I struck the gold. Only then I came down the valley."

They pushed on. Toward sunset a thick rain once more came down, and
filmy mists wreathed themselves about the hills and by and by filled
up the valley, and the strip of mountainside along which the two
lonely men plodded rose isolated from a sea of woolly vapor. They held
on, however, until, when the dusk commenced to creep up the white peak
above them, Weston stopped with a little start. There was a curious
huddled object in a crevice of the rocks not far in front of him.

"Do you see that?" he asked. "What can it be?"

Grenfell gazed at the thing steadily, and then turned to his
companion.

"I think it's Verneille," he said.

They came a little nearer, and saw that he was right, for presently
Grenfell stooped and picked up a discolored watch. It had fallen away
from the moldering rags, but it had a solid case, and, when at length
he succeeded in opening it, he recognized the dial. He gazed at it
with a softening face, and then slipped it into his pocket.

"He was a good comrade. A man with long patience, and I think he had a
good deal to bear from me," he said.

In the meanwhile Weston stood still, with the rain on his face and his
battered hat in his hand. Verneille lay in a cleft of the rocks, where
it seemed he had crawled when he broke down on his last weary march,
but the sun and the rain had worked their will, and there was very
little left of him. Indeed, part of the bony structure had rolled
clear of the shreds of tattered rags. Grenfell gazed at him fixedly,
and neither of the men said anything for the next minute or two. The
peak above them was fading in the growing night, and the stillness of
the great desolation seemed intensified by the soft patter of the
rain. Then Weston roused himself with an effort, for there was
something to be done.

"We can't leave him lying there," he said. "There is a little soil
among the stones. It's a pity we didn't bring the shovel."

The shovel was in the cache with one or two other prospector's tools,
which, as the reef they desired to find was uncovered in one place,
they had not thought it worth while to carry over that high ridge; so
they set to work in silence with the rifle butt and their naked hands.
Fortunately, the stones were large, and the soil beneath them soft,
and in about twenty minutes they were ready for the rest of their
task. It was one from which they shrank, but they accomplished it, and
Grenfell straightened himself wearily as they laid the last stone on
the little mound.

"It's all we can do, but I should feel considerably better if I could
get a hard drink now," he said.

Then he made a little forceful gesture.

"After all, he's well out of it. That man was white all through."

It was Verneille's only epitaph, pronounced most incongruously with
the same breath that expressed his comrade's longing for whisky, but
perhaps it was sufficient, for when one is called a white man it
implies a good deal in that country. Nobody, it seemed, knew where he
came from, or whether there was any one who belonged to him, but he
had done his work, and they had found him sitting high on the lonely
range to point the way. That might have been of no great service if it
were only treasure to which the gold trail led, but in the unclaimed
lands the prospector scouts a little ahead of the march of
civilization. After him come the axmen, the ploughmen and the
artisans, and orchards and mills and oatfields creep on a little
farther into the wilderness. Civilization has its incidental
drawbacks, but, in the west, at least, its advance provides those who
need them with new homes and food; and, when one comes to think of it,
in other respects it is usually the dead men who have pushed on in
advance who point the way.

A part only of the significance of that fact occurred to Grenfell when
the two men had plodded slowly on and left the little pile of stones
behind, and that was naturally the part applicable to his particular
case.

"This makes the thing quite certain," he said. "We're on the trail."

It was not astonishing that Weston had deduced as much already.

"Have you any idea where you separated?" he inquired.

"No," said Grenfell, wrinkling his forehead as though thinking hard.
"I've often tried to remember. As I told you, we started out from the
lake with scarcely any provisions left, and we couldn't find a deer. I
was played out and half-dazed, but for a time we pushed on together.
Then one day I found myself in the thick timber alone. Verneille must
have kept the range, and I was in the valley. I was very sick when I
struck the prospector's camp, and when I came round I had only the
haziest memory of the journey."

"If we can find a spot where the valley dies out into the range, it
will probably be where you left him," said Weston. "It would give us a
point to work from. In the meanwhile we want a place to camp."

They went down to the first of the timber, and, spreading their
blankets in a cranny of the rocks, built a great fire soon after
darkness fell. Weston, who made the fire, filled the blackened kettle
with water from the creek, and Grenfell, who crouched beside the
snapping branches, also left him to prepare the supper. They had been
on their feet since sunrise, and it was evident that he was very
weary. He recovered a little when he had eaten, but he leaned back
against the wet rock with a furrowed face when Weston took out his
pipe.

"Abstinence has its drawbacks," he said, shivering in the bitter wind
which whirled the stinging smoke about them. "With a very small
measure of whisky one could be warm and content." He glanced back into
the darkness that hid the towering peaks. "Verneille's to be
envied--he's well out of it."

"You said that before," said Weston, in whose veins life ran hot and
strong.

"I did," his companion replied, with a little hollow laugh. "You'll
find out some day that I was right. He was dead when he fell to pieces
in the wind and weather."

"Of course!" said Weston with a trace of impatience, for Grenfell's
half-maudlin observations occasionally jarred on him; but the latter
still looked at him with a curious smile.

"Keep clear of drugs and whisky. It's good advice," he said. "You may
go a long way before you die."

"I'd feel a little more sure of it if we could find the mine. It would
give you a lift up, too."

Grenfell shook his head.

"It could never lift me back to where I was," he said. "Could it give
me the steady nerves and the brain I used to have? There was a time
when scarcely a big mine was started in the west before they sent
their specimens to me. What could success offer me now besides a few
more years of indulgence and an opportunity for drinking myself into
my grave in comfort and with comparative decency?"

Weston supposed that this was the effect of weariness; but his comrade
straightened himself a little, and his uncertain gaze grew steadier.

"There's one thing it can do," he went on. "It can show those who
remember him as he was that Grenfell the assayer and mineralogist can
still look round a mineral basin and tell just where the gold should
be."

Weston was no geologist, but he had seen enough of it to recognize
that prospecting is an art. Men certainly strike a vein or alluvial
placer by the merest chance now and then, but the trained man works
from indication to indication until, though he is sometimes mistaken,
he feels reasonably sure as to what waits to be uncovered by the
blasting charge or shovel. Grenfell's previous account of the
discovery had, however, not made quite plain the fact that he had
adopted the latter course.

"You told me you found the quartz by accident when you went to drink
at a creek," he said. "Any green hand might have done the same."

Grenfell laughed.

"The point is that I knew there was gold in the valley. I told you we
stayed there until the provisions had almost run out. I wanted
material proof--and I was satisfied when I found that little strip of
outcrop."

"A little strip! You said the lead ran right back to the hill and one
could follow it with an adit."

"It does, although I haven't seen it. The adit would dip a little. The
thing's quite certain."

Weston once more became sensible of the misgivings that not
infrequently had troubled him. His comrade, he believed, really had
been a famous mineralogist, but now he was a frail and broken man with
a half-muddled brain who could not be trusted to keep the fire going
beneath the pots while he cooked a meal. He was also a prey to maudlin
fancies, and it seemed quite possible that the mine was no more than a
creation of his disordered imagination. There were only two things
that partly warranted his belief in it-a fragment of quartz, and the
presence of the dead man on the lonely range, though Weston admitted
that there was a certain probability of Grenfell's having deluded
Verneille too. He had, however, pledged himself to look for the lead,
and that, at least, he meant to do. The search, in the meanwhile, was
sufficient to occupy him, as he was one who escaped a good many
troubles by confining his attention to the task in hand.

"Well," he said, dismissing the matter from his mind, "I'll turn out
at sun-up, and when we've had breakfast we'll go on again."

He lay down near the snapping fire and, drawing up the blanket to keep
the rain from his face, was sound asleep in a few minutes. Grenfell,
however, sat awake for a long time, shivering in the whirling smoke,
and now and then glancing curiously at his companion.

CHAPTER IX

A FRUITLESS SEARCH

They had wandered far through the ranges, and camped beside several
lonely lakes, none of which, however, proved to be the one for which
they were searching, when Weston rose one morning from his lair among
the dewy fern. He did it reluctantly, for during the past week he had
carried Grenfell's load as well as his own, and it would have pleased
him to lie still a little longer. His shoulders were aching, and the
constant pressure of the pack-straps had galled them cruelly; but in
one respect it would not have troubled him if his burden had been
heavier, for their provisions were running out rapidly. There was a
river close by, but he no longer felt the least inclination for a
morning swim, or, indeed, for any occupation that was not obviously
necessary. He had lived very sparingly of late, and had contrived that
Grenfell got rather more than his share of the cut-down rations. It
was clear to him that the older man's strength was rapidly failing.

He kicked the embers of the fire together, and, after laying on a few
resinous billets split the night before, placed an inch or two of pork
in the frying-pan, and then carefully shook out a double handful of
flour from the almost-empty bag. This he beat up with water and poured
into the hot pan when the pork was done. He watched it until it
hardened a little on one side, when he flung it up into the air and
caught it in the pan again. There is an art in making palatable
flapjacks out of nothing but flour and water. When the meager
breakfast was ready, he awakened Grenfell, who sat up grumbling.

"It's time we made a start. This is our last day," said Weston.

Grenfell, who did not answer, made his toilet by buttoning his jacket
and stretching himself, after which he blinked at his companion with
watery eyes.

"There are no marble basins or delicately perfumed soaps in the bush,"
he said.

Weston laughed.

"I don't remember having seen them at the muskeg camp. In the
meanwhile, breakfast's ready. I'm sorry there isn't a little more of
it."

His companion glanced at the frying-pan.

"A scrap of rancid pork, and a very small flapjack--burnt at that! To
think that human intelligence and man's force of will should be
powerless without a sufficiency of such pitiable things. It's
humiliating."

Then, with a grimace of disgust, he stretched out his hand for the
blackened pannikin.

"Green tea is a beverage that never appealed to me, and I feel abject
this morning. Now, if I had a little Bourbon whisky I could laugh at
despondency and weariness. That golden liquid releases the mind from
the thraldom of the worn-out body."

"It depends on one's knees," said Weston, with a trace of dryness.
"Yours have a habit of giving out unexpectedly, and I shouldn't like
to carry you up this valley. Anyway, breakfast's ready, and we have to
find that lake to-day or give up the search."

They set about breakfast, and again it happened that Grenfell got
rather more than his share. Then Weston, who carried also the heavy
rifle, strapped the double burden on his shoulders, and they started
on their march, walking wearily. The valley that they followed, like
most of the others, was choked with heavy timber, and they pressed on
slowly through the dim shadow of great balsams, hemlocks, and Douglas
firs, among which there sprang up thickets of tall green fern that
were just then dripping with the dew. The stiff fronds brushed the
moisture through the rags they wore and wet them to the skin; but they
were used to that. It was the fallen trees that troubled them most.
These lay in stupendous ruin, with their giant branches stretching far
on either side, and, where tangled thickets rendered a detour
inadmissible, it now and then cost them half an hour's labor with the
ax to hew a passage through. Then there were soft places choked with
willows where little creeks wandered among the swamp-grass in which
they sank to the knees; but they pushed on resolutely, with the
perspiration dripping from them, until well on in the afternoon.

Once or twice Weston wondered why he had held on so long. It was some
time since they had found Verneille lying high upon the desolate
range, and this was still the only thing which seemed to bear out his
comrade's story. The latter had only a few very hazy recollections to
guide him, and during the last week he had not come upon anything in
the shape, of a mountain spur or frothing creek that appeared to fit
in with them. There was, however, a vein of tenacity in Weston, and he
was quietly bent on going on to the end--that is, until there were no
more provisions left than would carry them back to the cache, marching
on considerably less than half rations.

They had made, perhaps, two leagues with infinite difficulty, when
toward the middle of the afternoon they came upon a spur of the range
that ran out into the valley. Weston decided that they could probably
see some distance across the timber from the crest of it, so they
climbed up painfully. They were gasping when they reached a ledge of
rock a little below the summit, but that was not why they sat down.
Both shrank from the first momentous glimpse into the head of the
valley, for if there were no lake there they had thrown away their
toil and must drag themselves back to the settlements defeated and
broken men. It is hard to face defeat when one is young, and, perhaps,
harder still when one is old and has nothing to fall back on. Grenfell
expressed part of his thoughts when he turned to his companion.

"We shall decide the thing in a few more minutes," he said. "I suppose
we couldn't risk going on a little farther to-morrow?"

Weston shook his head resolutely, though he felt the same temptation.
It was in one sense curious that the older man should defer to him.

"No," said Weston, "we should have turned back several days ago. It
will be a tough march to reach the cache now."

Grenfell made a little gesture.

"Well," he said, "we'll go up and see."

They went up, part of the way on their hands and knees, and then,
though the slope was less steep, both of them hung back when they
neared the crest of the divide. There was still a faint probability
that their journey had not been futile, and they clung to it
desperately. Grenfell went first, and, when he reached the crest,
stood stone still with his back to Weston, who held his breath as he
scrambled after him. Then Grenfell, turning a little toward him,
suddenly flung out a pointing hand.

The head of the valley stretched away beneath them, but there was no
gleam from a lonely lake in the midst of it. From hillside to hillside
the close ranks of somber firs ran unbroken.

Weston's face grew hard and grim.

"That's the end," he said hoarsely. "There is nothing for it but to
take the back trail."

Then the strength seemed to melt out of Grenfell, and he sat down
limply.

"It was the belief that I should find that lake some day that has kept
me on my feet the last eight years," he said. "Except for that I
should have gone under long ago. Now, it's hardly likely that I shall
ever get back here again."

He turned and blinked at Weston with half-closed eyes.

"You can't understand. You have the world before you," he said.

Weston fancied that he could understand in part, at least. His comrade
was an old and frail and friendless man for whom nobody in that
country was, as they say there, likely to have any use, and the fact
that he probably had himself to blame for it did not make things
easier. Weston forgot that he also was a man without an occupation,
and his face grew sympathetic; but in a few minutes Grenfell seemed to
pull himself together.

"Well," he said, "we'll take the back trail."

They followed it for a week, but the distance that they covered
diminished day by day. Grenfell would insist on sitting down for half
an hour or so at regular intervals, and when they faced a steep ascent
Weston had to drag him. The man seemed to have fallen to pieces now
that the purpose that had sustained him had failed, and his comrade,
who carried a double burden and undertook all that was necessary each
time they made camp, grew more and more anxious every day, for, though
they did not eat enough to keep the strength in them, their provisions
were almost exhausted. Nor could he find a deer; and it became a
momentous question whether they could reach the cache before the last
handful of flour was gone. Still, they held on along the back trail,
with the burst boots galling their bleeding feet, worn-out, haggard,
and ragged, until, one day on the slope of the range, they lost the
trail, and when evening was drawing in they held a consultation.

There was a valley; a creek came frothing down not far from them; a
narrow, steep-sided cleft rent through stupendous rocks; and the white
ridge high above it seemed familiar. Weston gazed at the latter
thoughtfully.

"We could get up that way, and there'll be good moonlight to-night,"
he said. "If that snow-ridge lies where I think it does, there's a
ravine running down through the neck of the high spur; and once we
strike the big dip it's a straight trail to the cache. If we started
now we ought to get there to-morrow."

He broke off for a moment, and opened the almost-empty bag.

"In fact we have to."

Grenfell made a sign of acquiescence, and by and by they rose and
forced a passage through the timber into the ravine. Then they went up
and up, through the creek and beside it, crawling over fallen trees,
and dragging themselves across slippery shelves of rock, until, though
still very steep, the way grew a trifle easier. It was Grenfell's last
effort, and Weston had no courage left to cheer him on. At times he
stumbled beside him, and then went on and sat down gasping to wait
until his comrade came up with him again. It was a week since they had
made more than half a meal, and much longer since they had eaten a
sufficient one. They were famishing, worn-out, and a trifle fanciful,
while the light was dying fast and a great wall of mountains, beyond
which the cache lay, still rose in front of them.

Dusk crept up from the valley and overtook them as they climbed, then
passed ahead and blotted out the battalions of somber pines. The
little breeze that had sighed among the latter died away, and the
hoarse clamor of the creek intensified the deep silence that wrapped
dusky hillside and lonely valley. Then a half-moon sailed out above
the dim white peaks, and its pale radiance gleamed on frothing water
and dripping stone, and showed the two men still climbing. They drew
their breath heavily; the sweat of effort dripped from them; but they
toiled upward, with tense faces and aching limbs. The cache could not
be very far away, and they realized that if once they lay down they
might never commence the march again.

By and by the creek seemed to vanish, and its roar died away, while
after that they wandered, still ascending, apparently for hours among
dim spires of trees, until the path once more dipped sharply beneath
their feet. They had traversed a wider, shallower valley between the
spur and the parent range. Weston was afterward quite sure of that,
for it had a great shadowy wall of rock on one hand of it.

"We are coming down upon the cache. We have crossed the neck," he
said.

They blundered downward, walking now with half-closed eyes, and
sometimes for a few moments with them shut altogether. At times they
fell over boulders and into thickets of rotting branches that lay
around fallen trees, but, though their senses had almost deserted
them, they were certainly going down. The pines grew taller and
thicker; withered twigs and needles crackled beneath their feet;
though in places they plunged downward amidst a rush of slipping
gravel. Still, half-dazed as he was, Weston was puzzled. It seemed to
him that the gully they were descending was longer than it should have
been. It ought to have led them, by that time, out on a plateau from
which the hillside fell to the hollow where they had made the cache.
He did not, however, mention this to Grenfell.

By degrees the dim black trees grew hazier and less material. They
appeared unsubstantial shadows of firs and pines, and he resented the
fact that they barred his passage, when he blundered into one or two
of them. There was a creek somewhere, but it was elusive, flashing
here and there in the uncertain moonlight and vanishing again. Once or
twice he thought he had left it behind, and was astonished when
shortly afterward he stumbled into it to the knees. He had a
distressful stitch in his side, which, though he had been conscious of
it for several hours, was growing almost insupportable. Sometimes he
called to Grenfell, who seldom answered him, just to break the
oppressive silence. It seemed to enfold and crush him in spite of the
clamor of the creek which indeed he scarcely heard. No man, he
fancied, had crept through those solitudes before; but several times
he felt almost sure that he saw shadowy figures flitting among the
trees, and Grenfell declared that he heard the clank of cowbells.
Weston was not astonished, though he knew that no cattle had ever
crossed that range.

At last in the gray dawn they came to a little opening where the
ground was soft. It seemed familiar, and both of them stopped. They
certainly had seen before something very much like the slope of rock
that rose in front of them. Weston, blinking about him, discovered in
the quaggy mould two foot-prints half filled with water. He called to
Grenfell, who leaned on his shoulder while he stooped to see them more
clearly. Then he discovered two more footprints a little farther away.
They were fresh, and evidently had not been made by the man who left
the others. Suddenly, he straightened himself with a harsh laugh.

"That is where we went up last night. We are back again," he said.

Grenfell gazed at him stupidly.

"But we went through the valley between the range and the spur," he
insisted. "I remember it. We must have done so."

Weston's face showed drawn and grim in the creeping light.

"If you went over all the range by daylight you would never find that
valley again. It will have vanished altogether, like the lake."

"But I camped beside the lake."

"Well," said Weston, "we floundered through the valley, and we have
come back to where we started. That's a sure thing. What do you make
of it?"

Grenfell admitted that it was beyond him.

"It doesn't count for much in any case. We can't make the cache
now--and I'm going to sleep," he said.

Weston let his pack drop, and, unrolling their blankets, they
stretched themselves out beneath a great black pine. They had made
their last effort, and their strength was spent. There was, it seemed,
no escape. In the meanwhile, mind and body craved for sleep.

CHAPTER X

THE HOTEL-KEEPER

The sun was high in the heavens when Weston awakened, ravenous, with
an almost intolerable stitch in his side. He rose with a stagger, and
then sat down again, while his face went awry, and took out his pipe.
He had still a very little tobacco left, and he fancied that it might
deaden the pangs of hunger. Then he glanced at Grenfell, who lay fast
asleep close by, with his blanket falling away from him. The man's
face was half buried among the withered needles which were thick in
his unkempt hair, and he lay huddled together, grotesque and unsightly
in ragged disarray. Weston vacantly noticed the puffiness of his
cheeks, and the bagginess beneath his eyes. The stamp of indulgence
was very plain upon him, and the younger man, who had led a simple,
strenuous life, was sensible of a certain repulsion from him.

He realized also that were he alone it was just possible that, before
his strength failed him altogether, he might reach the spot where they
had cached their provisions, and for several minutes he grappled with
the question whether he should make the attempt. Then he brushed aside
the arguments that seemed to warrant it, and admitted that in all
probability Grenfell would have succumbed before he could get back
again. After all, this outcast who had led him into the wilderness on
a fruitless search was his comrade, and they had agreed to share and
share alike. That Grenfell had at the most only a few years of
indulgence still in front of him did not affect the question. The
specious reasons which seemed to prove that he would be warranted in
deserting his comrade would not fit in with his simple code, which,
avoiding all side issues, laid down very simply the things one could
not do.

Rising stiffly, he laid the flour-bag, which he had not shaken
absolutely empty, by Grenfell's side; and, taking from his pocket an
indelible pencil that he happened to have with him, he moistened the
point of it and scrawled a message across a piece of the almost-empty
package in which they had carried their tea.

"Gone to look for a deer," it read, and he laid a stone on it where
Grenfell could not fail to see it.

Then he took up the repeating rifle, and lurching down-hill plunged
into the forest. Both the black-tail deer and the mule-deer are to be
met with in that country, but, somewhat strange to say, they are, as a
rule, more plentiful round the smaller settlements than in the
wilderness, and they are always singularly difficult to see. The
inexperienced sportsman cannot invariably discern one when it is
pointed out to him, and the bush deer very seldom stand silhouetted
against the sky. Their pale tinting blends with that of the fir trunks
and the tall fern, and they seem to recognize the desirability of
always having something near them that breaks their continuity of
outline. Besides, to hunt in the thick bush needs the keenest powers
of observation of both ear and eye, and an infinite patience, of which
a worn-out, famishing white man is very rarely capable. When one steps
on a dry twig, or sets a thicket crackling, it is necessary to lie
still for minutes, or to make a long detour before again taking up the
line of approach to a likely spot; and that morning Weston blundered
noisily into many an obstacle. His eyes were unusually bright and
fiercely keen, but his worn-out limbs would not quite obey him.

He lay still among the undergrowth about the rocky places where the
deer come out to sun themselves clear of the dew-wet fern, and crawled
into quaggy swamps where the little black bear feeds, but he could
find no sign of life. When he strained his ears to listen there was
only the sound of falling water or the clamor of a hidden creek. Sight
was of almost as little service among those endless rows of towering
trunks, between which the tall fern and underbrush sprang up. There
was no distance, scarcely even an alternation of light and shadow. The
vision was narrowed in and confused by the unchanging sameness of the
great gray colonnade.

Still, Weston persisted in his search; though it was not patience but
the savageness of desperation that animated him. He would not go back
empty-handed, if he struggled on until he dropped.

It was late in the afternoon before his search was rewarded. He had
reached a strip of slightly clearer ground when he heard a faint
rustle, and he stiffened suddenly in strung-up attention. There was,
he remembered, a great hemlock close behind him, but he recognized
that any movement might betray his presence, and, standing very still,
he slowly swept his eyes across the glade. A curious, hard glint crept
into them when they rested on one spot where something that looked
very much like a slender, forked branch rose above a thicket. Then a
small patch of slightly different color from the thicket appeared
close beneath, and, though he knew that this might send the deer off,
he sank slowly down until he could sit on his drawn-back right foot.
He could not be sure of the steadiness of his hands, and he wanted a
support for the rifle. Though every nerve in him seemed to thrill, it
was done deliberately, and he found that he could see almost as
clearly from the lower level.

Then he waited, with the rifle in his left hand, and that elbow on his
knee, until there was a faint crackling, and a slightly larger patch
of fur emerged from the thicket. He held his breath as he stiffened
his left fingers on the barrel and dropped his cheek on the butt.
There would, he knew, be only one shot, a long one, and, while it was
not particularly easy to get the sight on that little patch, it was
considerably handier to keep it there. Besides, he was not sure that
the rear slide was high enough, for the light was puzzling. It might
very well throw him a foot out in the elevation.

He crouched, haggard, ragged, savage-eyed, steadying himself with a
strenuous effort, while the little bead of foresight wavered. It moved
upward and back again half an inch or so while his finger slowly
contracted on the trigger. Then, as it swung across the middle of the
patch, he added the last trace of pressure. He saw a train of sparks
leap from the jerking muzzle, and felt the butt jar upon his shoulder.
Still, as is almost invariably the case with a man whose whole force
of will is concentrated on holding the little sight on a living mark,
he heard no detonation. He recognized, however, the unmistakable thud
of the bullet smashing through soft flesh, and that was what he
listened for.

As he sprang to his feet, jerking another cartridge from the magazine,
there was a sharp crackling amidst the thicket and a rustling of the
fern. A blurred shape that moved with incredible swiftness sailed into
the air, and vanished as he fired again. The smoke blew back into his
eyes, and there was a low rustling that rapidly grew fainter. He ran
to the thicket, and found what he had expected--a few red splashes
among the leaves. Where the deer was hit he did not know, but he
braced himself for an effort, for he fancied that he could follow the
trail.

It proved a long and difficult one, but as he worked along it,
smashing through thickets and crawling over fallen trees, the red
sprinkle still showed among the leaves, and it did not seem possible
that the deer could go very far. Still, by this time the light was
growing dim, and he pressed on savagely with the perspiration dripping
from him in an agony of suspense. Even his weariness was forgotten,
though he reeled now and then.

At length, when he reached the head of a slope, there was a crackling
amidst the underbrush, and once more a half-seen shape rose out of it.
The rifle went to his shoulder, and, though he had scarcely expected
the shot to be successful, the object in front of him collapsed amidst
the fern. He could no longer see it, but, whipping out the big knife
that he carried in his belt, he ran toward the spot where it had
appeared. The ground seemed to be falling sharply, and he recognized
that there was a declivity not far away.

The deer rose once more, and, though only a yard or two away, he could
scarcely see it. His eyes seemed clouded, and he was gasping heavily.
Whether he dropped the rifle with intent or stumbled and let it slip
he never knew, but in another moment he had flung himself upon the
deer with the long knife in his hand. Then his feet slipped, and he
and the beast rolled down a slope together. The blade he gripped
struck soil and stones, but at length he knew that it had gone in to
the hilt in yielding flesh, and with a tense effort he buried it
again. After that he staggered clear, half-dazed, but exultant, with a
broad crimson stain on the rags he wore. The beast's limbs and body
quivered once or twice, and then it lay very still.

Weston took out his pipe and lay down with his back against a tree,
for all the power seemed to have gone out of him, and he did not seem
able to think of anything. The pipe was empty before it dawned on him
that his comrade was famishing, and there was still a task in hand. He
set about it, and, though it was far from heavy, he had some
difficulty in getting the dressed deer upon his shoulders. How he
reached camp with it he never knew, but he fell down several times
before he did so, and the soft darkness had crept up from the valley
when he staggered into the flickering glow of a fire. His face was
drawn and gray, and there was blood and soil on his tattered clothing.
He dropped the deer, and collapsed beside the fire.

"Now," he said hoarsely, "it's up to you to do the rest."

Grenfell set about it in wolfish haste, hacking off great strips of
flesh with patches of hide still attached to them; and it was only
when he flung them half-raw out of the frying-pan that Weston roused
himself. Fresh bush venison is not a delicacy even when properly
cooked, and there are probably very few civilized men who would care
to consume much of it. The muscular fiber resembles cordage; and
strong green tea is no doubt not the most desirable beverage to
accompany it; but Grenfell and Weston ate it in lumps and were asleep
within five minutes after they lay down gorged to repletion beside the
sinking fire. It is generally understood that a famishing person
should be supplied with nourishment sparingly, but in the wilderness
the man in that condition eats as much as he conveniently can, and
usually sleeps for about twelve hours afterward. In any case, the sun
was high the next day when Weston awoke, feeling, except for his
muscular weariness, as fresh as he had ever felt in his life. He
roused Grenfell with his foot.

"Get up," he said, "we have to consider what to do."

Grenfell blinked at him, with a grin.

"Consider!" he ejaculated. "I know. The first thing is to eat
breakfast. Then we'll lie down again until it's time for supper."

They did as he suggested, for there was meat enough to last until they
found the cache. This they managed to do two days later. Somewhat to
Weston's astonishment they found, also, the horse still feeding on the
strip of natural prairie; and, as the beast and the buried camp gear
it could now carry back represented their whole worldly wealth, this
was a source of gratification to both of them. The man without an
occupation or a dollar in his pocket does not, as a rule, find life
very easy.

They made the first settlement on the railroad safely; and Weston,
hearing that a new sawmill had been started in a neighboring valley,
set out the next morning in search of it, leaving Grenfell to dispose,
of the camp gear and the horse. The manager of the sawmill was,
however, marking trees in the bush, and, as Weston had to wait some
time before he learned that no more hands were wanted, it was evening
before he reached the little wooden hotel where he had left his
comrade. It had a veranda in front of it, and he stopped when he
reached the steps, for it was evident from the hoarse clamor and
bursts of laughter which came out of the open windows that something
quite unusual was going on. Then a man came down the steps chuckling,
and Weston, who stopped him, inquired the cause of the commotion.

"Two or three of the boys we have no great use for are going out
to-night to the copper vein the Dryhurst people are opening up," said
the stranger. "Your partner has been setting up the drinks for them."

Weston was not pleased at this, but the other piece of information the
man gave him was interesting.

"Are they taking on men?" he asked.

"Anybody who can shovel. Sent down to Vancouver for men a day or two
ago."

"Then," said Weston, "why didn't this hotel-keeper tell me, instead of
sending me across to the sawmill?"

His informant laughed.

"Jake," he said, "is most too mean to live. He strikes you a dollar
for your breakfast and another for supper, though anybody else would
give you a square meal for a quarter. Guess that may have something to
do with it."

Weston nodded.

"It's very probable," he said. "They're evidently getting angry about
something inside there. What's the trouble?"

"Guess it's your partner," said the other man, with a grin. "It seems
Jake bought a horse from him; but you'd better go in and see. I
decided to pull out when one of them got an ax. Struck me it would be
kind of safer in my shanty."

He went down the stairway; and as Weston went up a raucous voice
reached him.

"The money!" it said. "The money or the horse! You hear me! Hand out
the blame money!"

Weston pushed open the door and stopped just inside it. The room was
big, and, as usual, crudely furnished, with uncovered walls and floor,
and a stove in the midst of it. A bar ran along part of one side, and
a man in a white shirt was just then engaged in hastily removing the
bottles from it. Another man, in blue shirt and duck trousers, stood
beside the stove, and he held a big ax which he swung suggestively. It
was evident that several of the others were runaway sailormen, who
have, since the days of Caribou, usually been found in the forefront
when there were perilous wagon bridges or dizzy railroad trestles to
be built in the Mountain Province. There was, however, nothing English
in their appearance.

"He wants his horse! Oh, bring it out!" sang the man with the ax.

There was a howl of approval from the cluster of men who sat on a
rough fir table; but the man behind the bar raised an expostulating
hand.

"Boys," he said, "you have got to be reasonable. I bought that horse.
If the deadbeat who made the deal with me wants it back, all he has to
do is to produce the money."

Then Grenfell, who leaned on the table, drew himself up, and made a
gesture of protest. He was as ragged and unkempt as ever.

"I've been called a deadbeat, and I want it taken back," he said.
"It's slander. I'm a celebrated mineralogist and assayer. Tell you how
the deep leads run; analyze you anything. For example, we'll proceed
to put this hotel-keeper in the crucible, and see what we get. It's
thirty parts hoggish self-sufficiency, and ten parts ignorance. Forty
more rank dishonesty, and ten of insatiable avarice. Ten more of
go-back-when-you-get-up-and-face-him. Can't even bluff a drunken man.
I've no use for him."

There was a burst of applause, but Weston fancied that the
hotel-keeper's attitude was comprehensible in view of the fact that
the drunken man had a big ax in his hand. Crossing the room, he seized
Grenfell's shoulder.

"Sit down," he said sternly. "Have you sold that man my horse?"

"He has, sure," said one of the others. "Set us up the drinks
afterward. We like him. He's a white man."

"How much?" Weston asked.

"Twenty dollars."

Then the man with the ax, who appeared to feel that he was being left
out of it, swung the heavy blade.

"We want our horse!" he said. "Trot the blame thing out!"

One of the others thereupon raised a raucous voice and commenced a
ditty of the deep sea which was quite unquotable. Weston silenced him
with some difficulty and turned to the rest.

"Boys," he said, "has the man yonder spent twenty dollars on drinks
to-day?"

They were quite sure that he had not. He had, they admitted, set up a
round or two, but they were not the boys to impose upon a stranger,
and in proof of this several of them asked the hotel-keeper what he
had received from them. Then Weston turned to the latter.

"Now," he said, "we'll try to straighten this thing out, but I've no
intention of being victimized. It's quite clear that the boys don't
seem in a humor to permit that either."

"You've got us solid," one of them assured him. "All you have to do is
to sail right ahead. Burn up the blame hotel. Sling him out of the
window. Anything you like."

"Well," said Weston, addressing the hotel-keeper, "while I don't know
what your tariff is, it's quite evident to me, after what the others
have said, that my partner couldn't very well have spent more than
five or six dollars. We'll call it eight to make more certain, and
I'll pacify him if you'll hand me twelve."

"Twelve dollars," sang the axman, "or the horse! Bring them out!"

"It's worse than holding up a train," complained the hotel-keeper.
"Still, I'll part with it for the pleasure of getting rid of you."

He did so; and when Weston, who pocketed the money, inquired when the
next east-bound train left, one of the others recollected that it was
in rather less than half an hour. Some of them got up with a little
difficulty, and Grenfell looked at Weston deprecatingly.

"You mustn't hurry me," he observed, "my knees have given out again."

They set out in a body, two of them assisting Grenfell, who smiled at
the men assembled in the unpaved street to witness their departure.
There were eight of them altogether, including the man who still
carried the ax, which, it transpired later, belonged to the
hotel-keeper. The soft darkness fell, and the white mists crawled up
the hillside as, laughing harshly, they plodded through the little
wooden town. They were wanderers and vagabonds, but they were also men
who had faced the stinging frost on the ranges and the blinding snow.
They had held their lives lightly as they flung the tall wooden
bridges over thundering cañons, or hewed room for the steel track out
of their black recesses with toil incredible. Flood and frost, falling
trees, and giant-powder that exploded prematurely, had as yet failed
to crush the life out of them, and, after all, it is, perhaps, men of
their kind who have set the deepest mark upon the wilderness.

CHAPTER XI

IN THE MOONLIGHT

It was, as far as outward appearances went, a somewhat disreputable
company that had assembled in the little station when the whistle of
the Atlantic train came ringing up the track, and Weston would have
been just as much pleased if the agent had provided a little less
illumination. Several big lamps had just been lighted, though, there
was a bright moon in the sky, and Grenfell, who was dressed for the
most part in thorn-rent rags, sat on a pile of express freight amidst
a cluster of his new comrades discoursing maudlin philosophy. The
other man, who still clung to the hotel-keeper's ax, was recounting
with dramatic force how he had once killed a panther on Vancouver
Island with a similar weapon, and, when he swung the heavy blade round
his head, there was a momentary scattering of the crowd of loungers,
who had, as usual, gathered to see the train come in.

"Yes, sir, I split that beast right up first time," he said. "I'm a
chopper. You'd have seen the pieces fly if I'd sailed into that hotel
bar a little while ago."

Weston fancied that this was probable, for the man was dexterous, and
there was applause when he set the bright blade whirling, and passed
the haft from hand to hand. Most of the loungers could do a good deal
with the ax themselves, and the lean, muscular demonstrator made
rather a striking figure as he stood poised in statuesque symmetry
under the lamplight with the bright steel flashing about him.

In the meantime, Weston leaned on the pile of cases and packages
somewhat moodily. After paying for his ticket and Grenfell's to the
station nearest the copper-mine he had about four dollars in his
pocket, and he did not know what he should do if no employment were
offered him when he got there. He had no doubt that he could provide
for himself somehow, but Grenfell was becoming a responsibility. He
felt that he could not cast the man adrift, and it seemed scarcely
likely that anybody would be anxious to hire him. Still, Grenfell was
his comrade, and they had borne a good deal together during their
journey in the wilderness. That counted for something. There was also
another matter that somewhat troubled Weston. He was not unduly
careful about his personal appearance, but he had once been accustomed
to the smoother side of life in England, and his clothing was now
almost dropping off him. The storekeeper, whom he had interviewed that
morning, had resolutely declined to part with a single garment except
for money down; and, after an attempt to make at least part of the
damage good with needle and thread, Weston found the effort useless
and abandoned it.

Then two great locomotives came snorting out of the shadows that
wrapped the climbing track, and he grasped the shoulder of his
comrade, who did not appear disposed to get up. There was a little
pointed badinage between those who were starting for the mine and the
loungers, and in the midst of it the big cars rolled into the station.
Weston started, and his face grew darkly flushed, for two white-clad
figures leaned out over the guard-rail of one of the platforms, and
for a moment he looked into Ida Stirling's eyes. There was no doubt
that she had recognized him, and he remembered the state of his
attire, and became uneasily conscious that Grenfell, who clung to his
shoulder, was swaying on his feet. He knew that a man is usually
judged by his company, and it was clear that nothing that she might
have noticed was likely to prepossess Miss Stirling in his favor. The
car, however, swept past him, and with some difficulty he got Grenfell
into another farther along the train. Then, while his companions
exchanged more compliments with the loungers, the big locomotives
snorted and the dusty cars lurched on again.

They naturally traveled Colonist, and when Grenfell stretched himself
out on a maple board it became evident that he had forgotten his
blanket. Weston threw his own over him, and the old man blinked at his
young companion with watery eyes.

"You stood by me. You're white," he said; and added with a little
patronizing gesture, "I'm not going to desert you."

After that he apparently went to sleep, and Weston, who felt no
inclination for the company of the others, went out and sat on one of
the car platforms, glad for the time being to be rid of him.

There was a moon in the sky, and the silvery light streamed down on
towering hillside and battalions of flitting pines. The great train
swept on, clattering and clanking, and dust and fragments of ballast
whirled about the lonely man. Still, the rush of the cool night wind
was exhilarating, and his mind was busy, though his thoughts were not
altogether pleasant. The few weeks he had spent in Ida Stirling's
company had reawakened ambition in him; and that was why he had set
out with Grenfell in search of the mine. Though he had not reproached
his comrade, and had, indeed, only half believed in the quartz lead,
the failure to find it had been a blow. There was in that country, as
he knew, no great prospect of advancement for a man without a dollar;
and though he realized that it had not troubled him greatly until a
little while ago, he now shrank from the thought of remaining all his
life a wandering railroad or ranching hand. He had also a great desire
for Miss Stirling's good opinion, although he scarcely expected her to
think of him, except as one who had proved a capable guide.

He knew that he could never quite forget the night they had made the
hazardous descent together, and her courage and quiet composure under
stress and strain had had their effect on him. The imperious anger
with which she had turned on him when he forced her away from Miss
Kinnaird had also stirred him curiously. He could still, when he
chose, see her standing in the moonlight with a flash in her eyes,
questioning his authority to prevent her from snaring her companion's
peril. She was, he felt, one who would stand by her friends. He was
young, and the fact that she had seen him supporting the lurching
Grenfell at the station troubled him.

He had smoked his pipe out twice when he heard the vestibule door
click, and he started when he looked up, for Ida Stirling stood beside
him. Her light dress fluttered about her, and she stood with one hand
resting on the rail. There was no doubt that she recognized him, and
when he rose and took off his shapeless hat she looked at him steadily
for a moment or two. He wondered whether he were right in his surmises
as to why she did this; and, though his forehead grew a trifle hot, he
decided that he could not blame her. Appearances had certainly been
against him.

"I am going to join Mrs. Kinnaird. She is in the car behind the
sleeper, and that is farther along;" she said.

Weston moved so that she might step across to the adjoining car; but
she did not seem to notice this, and leaned on the rail close beside
him.

"The train is very hot with the lamps lighted," she said.

Weston understood this to mean that she was disposed to stay where she
was and talk to him awhile, which suggested that she was to some
extent reassured about his condition.

"Yes," he returned, "it is. In fact, I felt it myself. The smell of
the pines is a good deal pleasanter."

There was nothing original in the observation, and, though the roar of
wheels made it a trifle difficult to hear, he was careful as to how he
modulated his voice. Perhaps he was superfluously careful, for he saw
a smile creep into Ida's eyes.

"You seem amused," he said, and, for they stood in the moonlight, the
blood showed in his face.

"Why did you speak--like that?" his companion asked.

Weston looked at her gravely, and then made a little deprecatory
gesture.

"It was very stupid, I dare say. Still, you see, you were out on the
platform when the train came into the station."

There was something that puzzled him in Ida's expression.

"Well," she admitted, "I really had my fancies for a moment or two,
though I blamed myself afterward. I should have known better."

It was rather a big admission, but she said nothing else, and it was
Weston who broke the silence.

"I have to thank you for the prospecting outfit," he said.

The girl flashed a quick glance at him.

"It was partly Major Kinnaird's idea. You made use of it?"

Weston smiled.

"Grenfell and I did. That explains the state of my attire. You see, we
have just come down from the bush."

Then, somewhat to her astonishment, he took out his watch, and pointed
to the guard. It was of plain plaited leather, and had, she fancied,
probably cost about twenty-five cents.

"I don't know whether this could be considered part of a prospecting
outfit, but they had a bunch of them in the store," he said. "I felt I
should like some trifle that I could wear to remember our trip in the
ranges. I thought you wouldn't mind."

A momentary trace of embarrassment became visible in his companion's
face. The man was a bush packer, and she had seen him in somewhat
disreputable company, but she was ready to admit that he had aroused
her curiosity. She could be honest, and she would have admitted it as
readily had she never heard from Arabella Kinnaird of his connection
with the old hall in England. She looked at him, with a little laugh.

"Oh," she said, "everybody likes to be remembered, and I'm no
exception in that respect. There is really no reason why you shouldn't
have bought the guard."

Weston, who felt that he had gone quite far enough, merely bent his
head in a manner that, as she naturally noticed, the average bush
packer would not have adopted. It was she who first spoke again.

"You were successful in your search?" she asked.

Weston laughed.

"Do I look like a man who has just found a goldmine?"

"Well," said the girl, with a twinkle in her eyes, "I came across two
successful prospectors in Vancouver not long ago, and there was really
nothing to suggest it in their appearance. So you didn't find the
mine? Won't you tell me about your journey?"

"It's quite a story. Won't the others miss you?"

Ida turned toward him suddenly.

"Don't you mean more than that?"

"Well," admitted Weston slowly, "I think I did. Perhaps it was a
liberty."

"It was," said Ida, and, though she laughed, there was a little flash
in her eyes. "Major Kinnaird and his wife are English, and it is quite
possible that they would not be pleased to hear that I had come out to
talk with you on the platform of a car. Still, in Canada we have our
own notions as to what is fitting, and that I consider it perfectly
natural that I should do so is quite sufficient for me. I do not defer
to anybody's opinion as to how I should treat my friends. Now, unless
you have any more convincing excuses, you may tell me about the search
for the mine."

Weston did so, and, for the mere pleasure of having her near him, he
made rather a long tale of it. She stood where the vestibule of the
car in front partly sheltered her from the rush of the cold night
wind, swaying lightly to the jolting of the platform as the great
train sped on among the pines. Still, her light dress which gleamed
white in the moonlight fluttered about her and now and then flowed
against her companion. The simple tale of stress and effort borne and
made was one that went well with the snorting of the big locomotives
toiling up the climbing track and the rhythmic roar of wheels flung
back by primeval forest or towering wall of rock. The girl had
imagination enough to realize it.

"Oh," she said, "one likes to hear of such things."

Then she noticed the gauntness of his bronzed face and how lean he
was.

"Still," she added, "it has left its mark on you. You failed to find
the mine--it wasn't your fault--what are you going to do now?"

"Some day," said Weston, "I shall go back and search again."

He had made the resolution only that moment, but she saw the sudden
glint in his eyes.

"It was in the meanwhile I meant," she said.

"I am going a little way up the track with my partner to a
copper-mine."

"Ah," said the girl reflectively, "I suppose you feel that you must
take that man?"

"What else could I do with him?"

Ida's eyes softened curiously. After the scene at the station she
fancied that she understood the responsibility that he had taken upon
himself.

"And suppose they don't want you at the mine?"

"In that case we should go on again somewhere else."

"Of course your partner, who can earn nothing, will go with you."

Then she spoke almost sharply.

"How much money have you in your joint possession?"

"Three or four dollars," said Weston.

Again she turned toward him with a flush on her face.

"Now," she said, "I think you can disregard trivial conventionalities.
Won't you let me lend you some?"

"No," replied Weston quietly. "I shall not forget that you offered it,
but I'm afraid it's quite out of the question."

She knew that he meant it, and, though she greatly desired to lessen
his difficulties, she was, for no reason that was very apparent at the
moment, pleased with his answer. Then she changed the subject.

"Can your partner cook?" she asked.

"No," answered Weston, smiling, "he certainly can't. I and a good many
more of the boys know that from experience."

"Ah," said Ida reflectively, "that destroys another chance. Well, I am
glad that I have seen you, but I think I must join Mrs. Kinnaird now."

She held out the hand she had laid on the rail. It happened that as
she did it the train swung around a curve. The car slanted sharply,
and she swayed with the effort to keep her balance. In another moment
Weston's arm was around her waist. Then there was empty blackness
beneath them as the cars sped out upon a slender trestle, and the roar
of a torrent came up from below through the clash and clatter and
clamor of the wheels. There was probably no risk at all, for there
were rails on either side of them, but the girl, who had almost lost
her footing, was glad of the man's steadying hand, and did not draw
herself away until the big locomotives were speeding smoothly on
beneath the shadowy pines again. Then she drew back a pace or two.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

Weston took off his battered hat, and, stepping across the platform,
opened the door of the adjoining car. When she had passed through it,
he sat down and took out his pipe, with a curious little thrill
running through him and his nerves tingling.

Ida, also, felt her face grow a trifle hot, and, though she was as
composed as usual when she joined Mrs. Kinnaird, her thoughts were
busy for some time afterward. The man, she admitted, had done no more
than was warranted, but there was no disguising the fact that his
supporting grasp had had a disconcerting effect on her. Then she
dismissed the thoughts of that, and remembered with compassion how
lean and worn he looked. There was also something that stirred her
sympathy in the idea of his saddling himself with the care of a
helpless comrade who had no real claim on him, though that was, she
decided, after all, the kind of thing one would expect from him. Then,
recognizing that this was admitting a good deal, she endeavored to
interest herself in what Mrs. Kinnaird was saying.

It was late at night when the train stopped again, and Weston did not
know that when he and his companions alighted at a little desolate
station among the ranges, the blind of one window in the big sleeper
was drawn aside. In a few moments the train went on, but Ida Stirling
did not sleep for some time afterward. She had had a momentary glimpse
of a ragged man standing with the lamplight on his lean face and a
hand laid reassuringly on the shoulder of his half-dazed companion.

CHAPTER XII

THE COPPER-MINE

The red sun had risen above the dusky firs on a shoulder of the range
when Weston and his companions reached the copper-mine. It consisted
of an opening in the forest which clothed the hillside with the black
mouth of an adit in the midst of it, and a few big mounds of debris,
beside which stood a rude log shanty. The men who had just come out of
the latter gazed at the strangers with undemonstrative curiosity, and
when, saying nothing, they, trooped away to work, the new arrivals sat
down to wait until the mining captain should make his appearance. In
the meanwhile one of them amused himself by throwing stones at a
smaller log building with a galvanized roof which stood among the
firs. He looked at the others for applause when he succeeded in
hitting it.

"Let up," said a comrade. "The boss lives in there."

The man flung another stone, a larger one, which rang upon the iron
roof.

"Well," he said, "I guess that ought to fetch him."

It evidently did so, for the door of the shanty opened, and a man
attired in shirt and trousers came out. He was a big, lean man,
somewhat hard of face, and he favored the assembly with a glance of
quiet scrutiny, for he was, as it happened, acquainted with the habits
of the free companions.

"Getting impatient, boys?" he asked, and his voice, which was
curiously steady, had in it a certain unmistakable ring. It suggested
that he was one accustomed to command. "Well, what do you want?"

"A job," said one of Weston's companions.

The man looked at him with no great favor.

"Quite sure it isn't money? You can't have one without the other
here."

Then Grenfell rose and waved his hand.

"The explanation, I may observe, is unnecessary. In this country you
don't get money anywhere without first doing a good deal for it.
Unfortunately, it sometimes happens that you don't get it then."

"How long is it since you did anything worth counting?" asked the
captain.

One of Grenfell's companions pulled him down before he had a chance to
reply.

"Now you sit right down before you spoil things," he said. "You can't
put up a bluff on that kind of man. You don't know enough."

The miner glanced at them again, with a little grim smile.

"Well," he said, "you may stay there until I've started the boys in
the adit. Then I will come back and talk to you."

He moved away, and one of those he left relieved his feelings by
hurling another stone which crashed upon the iron roof of the shanty.

"That's a hustler--a speeder-up," he said. "You can't monkey with
him."

They waited for about an hour before the man came back, and, sitting
down on a fir stump, called them up one by one. Weston was reassured
to see that each was despatched in turn to the log building where he
presumed the tools were kept; but he and Grenfell were left to the
last, and he was somewhat anxious when he walked toward the stump. The
man who sat there glanced at his attire.

"Been up against it lately?" he inquired.

Weston admitted that this was the case; and the other smiled dryly.

"Can you chop and shovel?" he asked.

Weston said that he could; and the miner appeared to consider.

"Well," he said, "I'll put you on at----," mentioning terms which
Weston fancied were as favorable as he was likely to get. "Still,
you'll have to hustle, and we charge usual tariff for board. You may
start in."

Weston glanced toward Grenfell, who was still sitting where he had
left him.

"You see," he said, "there's my partner. We go together."

"I can't help that. You have my offer. I can't have that kind of man
on our pay-roll."

Weston stood silent for a moment or two. He had arrived at the wooden
hotel too late for supper the previous evening, and, as a rule,
neither blandishments nor money will secure the stranger a meal at an
establishment of that kind after the appointed hour. As the result, he
had eaten nothing since noon, when the sawmill hands had offered him a
share of their dinner; and, having assisted Grenfell along an infamous
trail most of the night, he was jaded and very hungry. Now work and
food were offered him, and there was not a settlement within several
leagues of the spot. He had, however, already decided that he could
not cast his comrade adrift.

"Well," he said, "perhaps there's a way out of it. If you'll let him
camp with the boys, I'll be responsible for his board."

"Any relation of yours?"

"No," replied Weston simply, "he's just my partner."

The other man looked at him curiously, and then made what Weston
fancied was an unusual concession.

"Well," he said, "we'll fix it. You may go along and drill with the
boys yonder in the open cut."

Weston did as he was bidden, and spent the rest of the morning
alternately holding the jarring drill and swinging a hammer. It was
strenuous work which demanded close attention, for the hammer was
heavy, and it is far from easy to hit a drill neatly on the head,
while the man who fails to do so runs the risk of smashing the fingers
of the comrade who holds it. It was not much more pleasant when he
gripped the drill in turn, for, though the other man stood on a plank
inserted in a crevice, Weston had to kneel on a slippery slope of rock
and twist the drill each time the hammer descended. The concussion
jarred his stiffened hands and arms. The distressful stitch also was
coming back into his side, and once or twice his companion cast an
expostulating glance at him.

"You want to speed up," he said. "Guess that boss of ours knows just
how much the most is that a man can drill, and he has to do it or get
out."

Though it cost him an effort, Weston contrived to keep his companion
going until the dinner hour arrived, and he found the work a little
easier when he had eaten. Still, he was perplexed about Grenfell, who
did not understand what arrangement he had arrived at with the mine
captain. Grenfell spent the afternoon mending his own and some of
Weston's clothes, which badly needed it, and the evening meal was over
when the latter sat with the others outside the shanty wearing a
jacket which his companion had sewed. Grenfell, however, was not with
them just then. By and by the man who had desired to wreck the hotel
bar turned to Weston.

"What are you going to do with your partner?" he asked.

"I don't quite know," said Weston. "In the meanwhile he'll stay here."

"How's he going to raise his board?"

"That's not quite your business," said Weston quietly.

The man laughed good-humoredly.

"Well," he replied, "in one way I guess it isn't. Still, if you pay
your partner's board you're going to have mighty little money left.
Mended that jacket, didn't he? Won't you take it off?"

Weston wondered a little at this request, but he complied; and the man
passed the garment around to' the others, who gravely inspected the
sewed-up rents and the patches inserted in it.

"Quite neat, isn't it?" he commented.

They admitted that it was; and the chopper, handing the garment back
to Weston, smiled as though satisfied.

"I've an idea, boys," he announced.

His companions appeared dubious, but he nodded quietly.

"I've got one sure," he said. "Now, in a general way, if there's a
store handy, I've no use for mending clothes; but you have to wash
them now and then, and it never struck me as quite comfortable to put
them on with half the stitching rubbed out of them. Well, washing's a
thing I'm not fond of either, and it's kind of curious that when one
man starts in at it everybody wants the coal-oil can."

They murmured languid concurrence, for, as he said, clothes must be
washed and mended now and then, and the man who has just finished a
long day's arduous toil seldom feels any great inclination for the
task. It usually happens, however, that when one sets about it his
companions do the same, and there is sometimes trouble as to who has
the prior claim on the big kerosene can in which the garments are
generally boiled.

"Well," said the chopper, "I've a proposition to make. There are quite
a few of us, and a levy of thirty or forty cents a week's not going to
hurt anybody while there's a man round here who can't chop or shovel.
Guess he has to live, and it's a blame hard country, boys, to that
kind of man. Now, it's my notion we make the fellow mender and washer
to the camp."

There was a murmur of applause, for, when they own any money, which,
however, is not frequently the case, the free companions are usually
open-handed men, and Weston was not astonished at their readiness to
do what they could for his companion. He had been in that land long
enough to learn that it is the hard-handed drillers and axmen from
whom the wanderer and even the outcast beyond the pale is most likely
to receive a kindness. Their wide generosity is exceeded only by the
light-hearted valor with which they plunge into some tremendous
struggle with flood and rock and snow.

"Make it half a dollar anyway," said one of them.

Then Weston stood up, with a little flush on his face and a curious
look in his eyes.

"Thank you, boys, but I have to move an objection," he said. "This is
a thing that concerns me."

"Sit down," commanded one of them sharply. "It's a cold business
proposition."

They silenced his objections, and sent for Grenfell, who appeared
disconcerted for a moment when he heard what they had to say. Then he
laughed somewhat harshly.

"Well," he said, "I'll be glad to do it, and I don't mind admitting
that the offer is a relief to me."

They strolled away by and by, and Grenfell made a little grimace as he
looked at Weston.

"When I can tell how the ore should pan out by a glance at the dump,
and plot just how the vein should run, it's disconcerting to find that
the only way I can earn a living is by washing and mending," he said.
"In fact," and he spread out his hands, "the thing's humiliating."

To a certain extent Weston sympathized with him. The man, it seemed,
had been a famous assayer, and now the one capability which was of any
use to him was that of neatly mending holes in worn-out garments. He
undertook the task cheerfully, however, and things went smoothly for a
week or two. Then a stranger, who appeared to be a man of authority,
arrived at the camp. He was a young man, who looked opinionative, and
when he first appeared was dressed in city clothes. Soon after his
arrival he strolled around the workings with the man whom Weston
hitherto had regarded as the manager. When he spoke sharply to one or
two of the men, the driller who worked with Weston snorted
expressively.

"Colvin puts the work through, but that's the top boss," he said. "You
can see it all over him. Learned all about mining back east in the
cities, and couldn't sink a hole for a stick of giant-powder to save
his life. Been down at Vancouver fixing up with the directors what
they're going to tell the stockholders. Still, I guess he's not going
to run this company's stock up very much."

"How's that?" Weston asked.

The man lowered his voice confidentially.

"Well," he said, "there's a good deal in mining that you can't learn
from books, and a little you can't learn at all. It has to be given
you when you're born. Colvin's a hustler, but that's 'bout all he is,
and I've a kind of notion they aren't going to bottom on the richest
of this vein. Anyway, it's not my call. They wouldn't listen to me."

Weston's gesture might have expressed anything. He naturally had been
favored with hints of this kind while he followed other somewhat
similar occupations, for it is not an uncommon thing for the men who
toil with the drill and shovel to feel more or less convinced that
those set over them are not going about the work in the right way. He
had also more than once seen this belief proved warranted. His
companion's suggestions, however, were borne out when he sat smoking
with Grenfell in the bush after supper.

"I've been in the adit this afternoon," observed the latter. "Colvin
sent me along to where they are putting in the heavy timbering." He
laughed softly. "Well, they're throwing away most of their money."

"You're sure?" inquired Weston.

"Am I sure!" expostulated his comrade. "I need only point out that I
ought to be."

"Then," said Weston, reflectively, "unless they ask your opinion,
which isn't very probable, I'd say nothing about it. Some people don't
take kindly to being told they're wrong. The thing doesn't affect you,
anyway."

He was a little astonished at the change in his companion, for a
sparkle crept into Grenfell's watery eyes, and his voice grew sharper.

"You haven't the miner's or the engineer's instinct; it's the same as
the artist's," he said. "He can see the unapproachable, beautiful
simplicity of perfection, and bad work hurts him. I don't know that
it's a crime to throw away money, but it is to waste intelligence and
effort that could accomplish a good deal properly directed. Why was
man given the power to understand the structure of this material
world? I may be a worn-out whisky wreck, but I could tell them how to
strike the copper."

"Still," said Weston, dryly, "I'd very much rather you didn't. I don't
think that it would be wise."

His companion left him shortly afterward, and it was some days later
when the subject was reopened. Then Grenfell came to him with a rueful
face.

"I've had an interview with the manager," he explained.

"Well," said Weston, sharply, "what did he say?"

Grenfell shrugged his shoulder.

"Told me to get out of camp right away."

Just then Colvin approached them, and his manner was for once slightly
deprecatory.

"It doesn't pay to know more than the boss," he said; and then he
looked at Weston. "He has to get out. What are you going to do?"

He had Weston's answer immediately.

"Ask you for my time."

"Well," said Colvin, with a gesture of expostulation, "I guess you
know your own business. Still, I'm quite willing to keep you."

Weston thanked him, and then went with him to his shanty where he was
handed a few bills, and in another hour he and Grenfell had once more
strapped their packs upon their shoulders. He did not know where he
was going, or what he would do, but he struck into the trail to the
railroad, and it was dusk when they reached a little wooden
settlement. He went into the post-office to make a few inquiries
before he decided whether he should stay there that night, and the
woman who kept it, recognizing him as a man from the mine, handed him
a letter. When he opened it he saw, somewhat to his astonishment, that
it was from Stirling. It was very terse, but it informed him that Miss
Stirling and her friends purposed camping among the islands of one of
the eastern lakes, which was then a rather favorite means of
relaxation with the inhabitants of Toronto and Montreal. Stirling
desired him to accompany the party, on terms which appeared very
satisfactory, and added that if he were acquainted with another man
likely to make an efficient camp attendant he could bring him along.

Weston started a little when he reached the last suggestion, for he
fancied that it was Miss Stirling who had made it. He leaned on the
counter for several minutes, thinking hard; and then, though he was
not sure that he acted wisely, he started for the station to despatch
a telegram, as Stirling had directed. The next morning the agent
handed him tickets for himself and Grenfell, and they set out on the
Atlantic train.

CHAPTER XIII

STIRLING LETS THINGS SLIDE

It was early evening when Weston swung himself down from the platform
of the Colonist car in a little roadside station shut in by the pine
bush of Ontario. There was a wooden hotel beside the track, and one or
two stores; but that was all, and the fact that nobody except the
station-agent had appeared to watch the train come in testified to the
industry, or, more probably, the loneliness of the district. While
Weston stood looking about him a man came out of the office, and he
was somewhat astonished to find himself face to face with his
employer.

The smart straw hat and light summer suit did not become the
contractor. He was full-fleshed and red of face, and the artistically
cut garments striped in soft colors conveyed a suggestion of ease and
leisure which seemed very much out of place on him. One could not
imagine this man lounging on a sunlit beach, or discoursing airily on
a cool veranda.

"Got here," he said abruptly, and then swung around and looked at
Grenfell. "This is the other man? Well, he can stay and bring along
the baggage. There's most a freight-car full. They'll give him a wagon
and team at the hotel."

He indicated a great pile of trunks and cases with a wave of his hand,
and, seeing Weston's astonishment, added with a twinkle in his eyes:

"My daughter and her friends are camping. They have to have these
things."

Weston understood his employer's smile. This, he recognized, was a man
who could be content with essential things, and in all probability had
at one time esteemed himself fortunate when he succeeded in obtaining
them.

"Hadn't I better help him load them up?" he asked.

"No," said Stirling, with a curtness at which Weston could not take
offense. "He can put in the evening that way if it's necessary. It
will supple him, and I guess he needs it. I have a rig ready. You're
coming along with me."

Weston took his place in the light, four-wheeled vehicle, and found it
difficult to keep it, for the trail was villainous, and Stirling drove
rapidly. Their way led between shadowy colonnades of towering firs,
and the fragile, two-seated frame bounced and lurched into and out of
deep ruts, and over the split trees that had been laid flat-side
downward in the quaggy places--like a field gun going into action was
the best comparison Weston could think of. The horses, however, kept
their feet, and the wheels held fast. Once, when a jolt nearly pitched
him from his seat, Stirling laughed.

"After the city it's a relief to let them out," he said. "I did this
kind of thing for a living once. The mine was way back in the bush,
leagues from anywhere, and I hired out as special store and despatch
carrier. There was red-hot trouble unless I got through on time when
the mail came in."

He drove the team furiously at an unguarded log bridge which was
barely wide enough to let the wheels pass.

"It's quite a way to the lake yet, and we want to make the camp before
it's dark," he explained. "Know anything about sailing a boat?"

Weston said that he did, and Stirling nodded.

"That's good," he observed somewhat dryly, "so does the major man."

Weston ventured to smile at this, and once more his employer's eyes
twinkled.

"Some of you people from the old country are quite hard to amuse;
though I'm open to admit that we have a few of the same kind on this
side," he said. "My daughter seemed to fancy they wouldn't find a lake
camp quite right without a boat, so I sent along and bought one at
Toronto. Had her put on a flat car, and hired half the teams in the
district to haul her to the lake. Now, I guess there are men in this
country who, if they wanted a boat, would just take an ax and whipsaw
and build one out of the woods."

Weston laughed. He was commencing to understand the man better, for he
had met other men of Stirling's description in Canada. As a matter of
fact, they are rather common in the Dominion, men who have had very
little bestowed on them beyond the inestimable faculty of getting what
they want at the cost of grim self-denial and tireless labor. Still,
as it was in Stirling's case, some of them retain a whimsical
toleration for those of weaker fiber.

"It's a bush camp?" Weston asked.

Stirling smiled good-humoredly.

"They call it that," he said. "It cost me quite a few dollars. You'll
see when you get there."

Weston was somewhat relieved when they safely accomplished the first
stage of the journey, and, turning the team over to a man by the
waterside, paddled off to a big, half-decked boat beautifully built
and fitted in Toronto. Stirling, who admitted that he knew nothing
about such matters, sat down aft and lighted a cigar, while Weston
proceeded to get the tall gall mainsail and big single headsail up. He
was conscious that his companion was watching him closely, and when he
let go the moorings and seated himself at the tiller the latter
pointed up the lake.

"About a league yet--round that long point," he said.

A moderately fresh breeze came down across the pines, and when Weston,
getting in the sheet, headed her close up to it, the boat, slanting
sharply, leaped forward through the smooth water. He sat a little
farther to windward, and the slant of deck decreased slightly when
Stirling did the same.

"You can't head there straight?" the latter asked.

"No," said Weston, "not with the wind as it is. She'll lie no higher."

"Well," observed Stirling, "she's going, anyway. That pleases me. It
helps one to get rid of the city. We'll have a talk, in the meanwhile.
I sent for you before. Why didn't you come?"

It was somewhat difficult to answer, and Weston wrinkled his forehead,
stiffening his grasp on the tiller.

"I was fortunate enough to be of some little service to Miss
Stirling's friends on the range, and I fancied that because of it you
meant to offer me promotion of some kind," he said.

"Well?" queried Stirling, with his eyes fixed on his companion's face.

Weston hesitated. He could not very well tell this man that a vein of
probably misguided pride rendered him unwilling to accept a favor from
Ida Stirling's father.

"I don't think there was any obligation, sir," he said.

"That," remarked Stirling dryly, "is a kind of feeling that may trip
you up some day. Still, you came this time."

"I did," said Weston. "You see, the case was rather different. You
offered to hire me to do a thing I'm accustomed to. It's my
occupation."

His companion made a little sign of comprehension, though there was a
faintly whimsical smile in his eyes.

"Now, you're wondering why I brought you back east all this way?"

Weston admitted it, and the contractor fixed his eyes on him.

"Well," he said, "it seems that there's fishing and sailing to be
done, and I'm not quite sure about that major man. Guess he's always
had people to wait on him, and that doesn't tend to smartness in any
one. When my daughter and her friends go out on the lake, or up the
river, you'll go along with them."

This was, perhaps, a little hard on Major Kinnaird, but Weston to some
extent sympathized with his employer's point of view. The contractor
was not a sportsman as the term is generally understood, but he was a
man who could strip a gun, make or mend harness, or break a horse.
When he had gone shooting in his younger days it was usually to get
something to eat, and, as a rule, he obtained it, though he rent his
clothes or got wet to the waist in the process. He could not sail a
boat, but if he had been able to do so he would also in all
probability have been capable of building one. Stirling was a man who
had never depended very much on others, and could, if occasion arose,
dispense with their services. He recognized something of the same
resourcefulness in Weston, and, because of it, took kindly to him.

In the meanwhile the breeze had freshened, and the boat, slanting more
sharply, commenced to throw the spray all over her as she left the
shelter of the woods behind. She met the short, splashing head sea
with streaming bow, and the sliding froth crept farther and farther up
her lee deck as she smashed through it. Then as the water found its
way over the coaming and poured down into her, Stirling glanced at his
companion.

"Got all the sail she wants?" he asked. "Is she fit to stand much more
of it?"

"She should be safe with another plank in, but I was thinking of
taking some of the canvas off her now," said Weston.

Stirling hitched his twelve stone of flesh farther up to windward.

"Then," he said, "until she puts that plank in you can let her go."

A wisp of spray struck him in the face, but Weston, who saw the smile
in his eyes, was curiously satisfied. It suggested, in the first
place, an ample confidence in him, which was naturally gratifying, and
in the second, that Stirling in spite of his years could take a keen
pleasure in that particular form of the conflict between the great
material forces and man's nerve and skill. It is a conflict that goes
on everywhere in the newer lands.

For another half-hour Weston kept the staggering over-canvased craft
on her feet by a quick thrust of the tiller or a slackening of the
sheet, and his companion appeared oblivious of the fact that he was
getting wetter and wetter. She was fast, and she went through the
little curling ridges with an exhilarating rush, while the foam
swirled higher up her depressed deck, and the water flung up by her
streaming bows beat in between her shrouds in showers. Then, when half
the deck dipped under, Weston thrust down his helm, and the craft,
rising upright, lay with her big mainsail thrashing furiously above
her.

For ten minutes Weston was very busy with it, and, when he had hoisted
it again with a strip along the foot of it rolled up, he crouched
forward in the spray struggling with the big single headsail, which
was a much more difficult matter. Once or twice he went in bodily when
the hove-down bowsprit put which he crawled, dipped under, but he
succeeded in tying up the foot of that sail too, and scrambled aft
again breathless and gasping. He noticed that his employer, who did
not seem to mind it, was almost as wet as he was.

"I'm sorry, but you told me I could let her go," he apologized.

Stirling smiled somewhat dryly.

"I'm not blaming you; but you don't quite finish. Wondering why I did
it, aren't you?"

Weston did not admit it, but perhaps his face betrayed him, for his
companion nodded.

"Well," he said, "you told me that you could sail a boat, and I wanted
to make sure of it. Seems to me anybody could hold the tiller when
she's going easy in smooth water. Know how I used to choose when I
wanted a chopper, in the days when I worked along with the boys? Well,
I gave the man an ax, set him up in front of the biggest tree I could
find, and made him chop."

There could be no doubt about the efficiency of that simple test, and
Weston recognized that it was very much in keeping with his employer's
character, though he fancied that it was one which, if rigorously
applied everywhere, would leave a good many men without an occupation.
He only laughed, however; and nothing more was said until the boat
reached in shoreward on another tack. It carried her round the long
point, and a deep, sheltered bay with dark pine forest creeping close
down to the strip of white shingle which fringed the water's edge
opened up. Then, as the trees slid past one another, a little clearing
in the midst of them grew rapidly wider, and Weston was somewhat
astonished to see a very pretty wooden house grow into shape. He
glanced at Stirling.

"Yes," said the latter, with a suggestion of grim amusement, "that's
the camp."

Once more Weston understood him, and, as their eyes met, man and
master smiled. Both of them knew there were hosts of strenuous,
hard-handed men growing wheat and raising cattle in that country who
would have looked on that camp as a veritable mansion. They were,
however, men who had virgin soil to break or stupendous forests to
grapple with, tasks of which many would reap the benefit, and they
very seldom troubled much about their personal comfort.

After a while, Weston, lowering the headsail, dropped the anchor over
close to the beach, and Major Kinnaird paddled a canoe off gingerly.
He was, as usual, immaculately neat, and Weston noticed the contrast
between him and Stirling, whose garments had apparently grown smaller
with the wetting. The latter pitched his valise into the canoe without
waiting for Weston to see to it, and then stood up endeavoring to
squeeze some of the water from his jacket.

"It's the only one I've got," he said to Kinnaird. "Anyway, I guess
the thing will dry, and I've had a sail that has made me feel young
again."

Then they went ashore, and Weston, who was very wet, was left
shivering in the wind to straighten up the gear, until a bush rancher,
who had been engaged to wait on the party until he arrived, paddled
off for him. The rancher had prepared a satisfactory supper; and some
time after it was over, Stirling and Mrs. Kinnaird sat together on the
veranda. There was, at the time, nobody in the house. The breeze had
fallen lighter, though a long ripple still lapped noisily upon the
beach, and a half-moon had just sailed up above the clustering pines.
Their ragged tops rose against the sky black as ebony, but the pale
radiance they cut off from the beach stretched in a track of faint
silvery brightness far athwart the lake.

Mrs. Kinnaird, however, was not watching the ripple flash beneath the
moon, for her eyes were fixed on two dusky figures that moved through
the shadow toward the water's edge. By and by there was a rattle of
shingle, and presently the black shape of a canoe slid down into the
moonlight. It rose and dipped with the languid ripple, and the two
figures in it were silhouetted against the silvery gleam. One was a
man in a wide hat who knelt and dipped the flashing paddle astern, and
the other a girl. The craft crossed the strip of radiance and vanished
round the point, after which Mrs. Kinnaird flashed a keen glance at
her companion. He sat still, and his face, on which the moonlight
fell, was almost expressionless, but Mrs. Kinnaird fancied he had
noticed as much as she had, and that he had possibly grasped its
significance. In case he had not done the latter, she felt it her duty
to make the matter clear to him.

"I suppose that is Ida in the canoe," she said.

"It seems quite likely," replied her companion. "It couldn't have been
your daughter, because she went along the beach not long ago with the
major, and I don't think there's another young lady in the vicinity."

"Then the other must be--the packer."

The pause and the slight change of inflection as she said "the packer"
had not quite the effect she had intended. Stirling himself had once
labored with his hands, and, what was more, afterward had a good deal
to bear on that account. He was not particularly vindictive, but he
remembered it.

"Yes, it's Weston," he said, and his companion felt herself corrected;
but she was, at least where Major Kinnaird was not concerned, in her
quiet way a persistent woman. Besides, Miss Stirling, who was going
with her to England, would some day come into considerable
possessions, and she had a son who found it singularly difficult to
live on the allowance his father made him.

"Is it altogether advisable that she should go out with him?" she
asked.

Stirling smiled somewhat dryly, for there was a vein of combativeness
in him, and she had stirred it.

"You mean, is it safe? Well, I guess she's quite as safe as she would
be with me or the major."

"Major Kinnaird was a flag officer of a rather famous yacht club,"
said the lady, who, while she fancied that her companion meant to
avoid the issue, could not let this pass. She was, however, mistaken
in one respect, for Stirling usually was much more ready to plunge
into a controversy than to back out of it.

"Well," he said reflectively, "the other man has earned his living
handling sail and people, which is quite a different thing."

Then he leaned toward her, with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Madam," he added, "wouldn't you better tell me exactly what you
meant?"

Mrs. Kinnaird had a certain courage, and she was endeavoring to do her
duty as she understood it.

"That packer," she said, "is rather a good-looking man, and girls of
Ida's age are sometimes a trifle--impressionable."

Then, somewhat to her astonishment, Stirling quietly agreed with her.

"Yes," he said, "that's so. Seems to me it was intended that they
should be. It's part of the scheme."

He made a little gesture.

"We'll let that point slide. Anything strike you as being wrong with
Weston?"

"No," said the somewhat startled lady, "the man is of course reliable,
well-conducted, and attentive; but, after all, when one says that----"

"When you said reliable you hit it. It's a word that means a good
deal; but couldn't you say a little more than well-conducted? From
something your daughter learned by chance, his relatives are people of
position in the old country. That counts for a little, though perhaps
it shouldn't."

Once more Mrs. Kinnaird's astonishment was very evident.

"It shouldn't?"

"That's just what I meant. If a man is clean of character, and has
grit and snap in him, I don't know that one could reasonably look for
anything further. I can't see how the fact that his grandfather was
this or that is going to affect him. The man we're talking of has
grit. I offered him promotion, and he wouldn't take it."

"Ah," said his companion, "didn't that strike you as significant?"

Stirling looked thoughtful.

"Well," he admitted slowly, "as a matter of fact, it didn't; but it
does now."

He sat silent for almost a minute, with wrinkled forehead, while Mrs.
Kinnaird watched him covertly. Then, feeling the silence embarrassing,
she made another effort.

"Supposing that my fancies concerning what might perhaps come about
are justified?" she suggested.

Stirling faced the question.

"Well," he said, "whether they're justified or not is a thing we don't
know yet; but I want to say this. I have never had reason to worry
over my daughter, and it seems to me a sure thing that she's not going
to give me cause for it now. When she chooses her husband, she'll
choose the right one, and she'll have her father's money; it won't
matter very much whether he's rich or not. All I ask is that he should
be straight and clean of mind, and nervy, and I guess Ida will see to
that. When she tells me that she is satisfied, I'll just try to make
the most of him."

He broke off for a moment, and laughed softly.

"I guess it wouldn't matter if I didn't. My girl's like her mother,
and she's like--me. When she comes across the right man she'll hold
fast by him with everything against her, if it's necessary, as her
mother did with me."

He rose and leaned against a pillar, with a curious look in his face.

"The struggle that her mother and I made has left its mark on me. The
friends we left in the rut behind us looked for my failure, and it
seemed then that all the men with money had leagued themselves
together to stop me from going on. Somehow I beat them, one by
one--big engineers, financiers, financiers' syndicates,
corporations--working late and working early, sinking every dollar
made in another venture, and living any way. There were no amenities
in that fight until those we had against us found that it was wiser to
keep clear of me."

Then, with a little forceful gesture, he took off his hat.

"What I am, in part, at least, my girl's mother made me. She's asleep
at last, and because of what she bore it's up to me to make things
smoother for her daughter. Madam," he added, turning to his companion
with a smile, "I have to thank you for doing what you must have
figured was your duty; but in the meanwhile we'll--let things slide."

He turned away and left her before she could answer, astonished but a
little touched by what she had heard. Still, the gentler impression
vanished, and when she informed Major Kinnaird of what had been said
she was once more somewhat angry with Stirling.

"It is really useless to reason with him," she said. "The man has
wholly preposterous views."

CHAPTER XIV

IDA ASSERTS HER AUTHORITY

It was a hot afternoon, and Ida, who was tired of fishing, sat
carefully in the middle of a fragile birch canoe. Her rod lay
unjointed beside her, and two or three big trout gleamed in the bottom
of the craft, while Weston, who knelt astern, leisurely dipped the
single-bladed paddle. Dusky pines hung over the river, wrapping it in
grateful shadow, through which the water swirled crystal clear, and
the canoe moved slowly down-stream across the slack of an eddy.
Farther out, the stream frothed furiously among great boulders and
then leaped in a wild white rush down a rapid, though here and there a
narrow strip of green water appeared in the midst of the latter. The
deep roar it made broke soothingly through the drowsy heat, and Ida
listened languidly while she watched the pines slide past.

"I wonder what has become of the major," she said at length, with a
little laugh. "It is too hot for fine casting, and he probably has had
enough of it. After all, it really doesn't matter that the fish won't
rise."

She saw Weston's smile, which made it evident that he was equally
content to drift quietly through the cool shadow with the sound of
frothing water in his ears. Then she wondered whether that was his
only cause for satisfaction, and recognized that, if this were not the
case, she had given him a lead. He did not, however, seem very eager
to make the most of it.

"We might get another fish in the broken water," he suggested. "Would
you like to try?"

"No," said Ida, "I wouldn't."

She was a trifle displeased with him. The man, she felt, might at
least have ventured to agree with her, and there was, after all, no
reason why he should insist on reminding her, in one way or another,
that he was merely her canoe attendant, when she was willing to
overlook that fact. She had once or twice, when it was evident that he
did not know that she was watching him, seen something creep into his
eyes when he glanced in her direction. He was, however, for the most
part, almost unduly cautious in his conversation, and she now and then
wondered whether his reticence cost him anything.

"It's a pity it isn't always summer afternoon," she said.

Weston looked at her rather curiously, though for the next few moments
his lips remained set. There was a good deal he could have said in
that connection, but he suppressed it, as he had done more than once
already when similarly tempted. He felt that if he once allowed his
sentiments audible expression they might run away with him.

"Oh, yes," he said, "I suppose it is."

Ida wondered whether he was quite insensible to temptation, or
absurdly diffident, for she had now given him two openings, and he had
answered with only the tritest of remarks. She knew he was not stupid,
but there were times when, for no apparent reason, he seemed suddenly
to retire into his shell. She did not know that on these occasions he
had laid a somewhat stern restraint upon himself.

"This land is not quite as grand as British Columbia, but I think I
almost like it better," she said. "Still, we spent a very pleasant
time in the ranges."

"Those ranges could hardly be beaten," said Weston.

He paddled a little more strenuously after this, and Ida abandoned the
attempt to extract any expression of opinion from him. She had made
sufficient advances, and she would go no further.

"Well," she said, "I don't care to fish any longer. Can't we shoot
that rapid?"

Weston's answer was given without hesitation. It requires nerve and
judgment to shoot a frothing rapid. Just then, however, the task
promised to be a relief to him. His companion was very alluring, and
very gracious now and then, and that afternoon he found it remarkably
difficult to remember that she was the daughter of his employer, and
that there were a good many barriers between her and himself.

"Yes," he said, "I think it would be safe enough if you'll sit quite
still."

Three or four strokes of the paddle drove the canoe out into the
stream, and after that, all he had to do was to hold her straight.
This was, however, not particularly easy, for the mad rush of water
deflected by the boulders swung her here and there, and the channel
was studded with foam-lapped masses of stone. Gazing forward, intent
and strung-up, he checked her now and then with a feathering
backstroke of the paddle, while the boulders flashed up toward her out
of the spray, and the pines ashore reeled by. The foam stood high
about the hollowed, upswept bow, and at times boiled a handbreadth
above the depressed waist, but, while the canoe swept on like a
toboggan, none came in. There was more than a spice of risk in it, and
Ida, who knew what the result would be if her companion's nerve
momentarily deserted him, now and then glanced over her shoulder. When
she did so, he smiled reassuringly, leaning forward with wet hands
clenched hard on the flashing paddle. She felt that he was to be
relied on.

Then she abandoned herself to the exhilaration of the furious descent,
watching boulder and eddy stream by, while the spray that whirled
about her brought the crimson to her face. At length the pace grew a
little slacker, and Weston drove the canoe into an eddy where a short
rapid divided them from the smooth green strip of water that poured
over what could almost be called a fall. Then she turned toward him
with glowing face.

"That was splendid!" she exclaimed. "Can't we go right on down the
fall?"

Weston ran the canoe in upon the shingle before he answered her.

"No," he said, though it cost him an effort not to do as she wished,
"I'm sorry I can't take you down."

Ida glanced at the slide of silky green water that leaped out over a
shelf of rock and fell through a haze of spray into a whirling pool.
It did not look altogether attractive, and now that she could see it
more clearly she rather shrank from it; but she was accustomed to
having exactly what she wished, and her companion had not shown
himself quite as ready to meet her views that day as she would have
liked. An impulse that she did not altogether understand impelled her
to persist.

"The Indians go down now and then," she said.

"Yes," admitted Weston, "I believe they do."

"Then why can't you?"

Weston appeared a trifle embarrassed.

"It wouldn't be quite safe."

"You mean to you?"

The man's face flushed a little. He had done a good deal of river
work, and none of his companions had accused him of lack of nerve,
but, though he had an excellent reason for knowing that the thing was
possible, he had no intention of shooting the fall.

"Well," he said, "if you like to look at it in that way."

Ida rose and stepped ashore without taking his proffered hand. Then
she leaned on a boulder while Weston sat still in the canoe, and for a
moment or two they looked at each other. The situation was a somewhat
novel one to the girl, for, in spite of the fact that she desired it,
the packer evidently did not mean to go. This alone was sufficient to
vex her, but there was another cause, which she subconsciously
recognized, that made her resentment deeper. It was that this
particular man should prove so unwilling to do her bidding.

"It is quite a long way to the lake, and the trail is very rough," she
said.

"It is," admitted Weston, who was glad to find a point on which he
could agree with her. "In fact it's a particularly wretched trail.
Still, you have managed it several times, and we have generally left
the canoe here."

"This time," said Ida, "we will take it down to the lake. I may want
it to-morrow. You will have a difficult portage unless you go down the
fall."

Weston recognized that this was correct enough, for the river was shut
in by low crags for the next half-mile at least, and he remembered the
trouble he had had dragging the canoe when he brought it up. He had
also had Grenfell with him then.

"Well," he said, "if you would rather not walk back, it must be
managed."

"I told you I wanted the canoe on the lake tomorrow," said the girl.

Weston was quite aware that there was another canoe which would serve
any reasonable purpose already on the beach, but he merely made a
little sign of comprehension and waited for her to go. Somewhat to his
annoyance, however, she stood still, and he proceeded to drag out the
canoe. The craft was not particularly heavy, but it was long, and he
had trouble when he endeavored to get it upon his back. He had more
than once carried the Siwash river-canoes over a portage in this
fashion, but there is a trick in it, and the birch craft was larger
and of a different shape. He felt that he could have managed it had
there been nobody to watch him, but to do it while the girl noticed
every movement with a kind of sardonic amusement was quite a different
matter. He was very hot when, after a struggle of several minutes, he
got the craft upon his shoulders; and then, after staggering a few
paces, he rammed the bow of it into a tree. The shock was too much for
him, and he went down head-foremost, with the canoe upon him, and it
felt quite heavy enough then. As the man who attempts the feat has his
hands spread out above him, that fall is, as a rule, a very awkward
one. It was a moment or two before he crawled out from under the
craft, gasping, red in face, and somewhat out of temper, and he was
not consoled by his companion's laugh.

"I am sorry you fell down, but you looked absurdly like a tortoise,"
she observed.

Weston glanced at the canoe disgustedly.

"Miss Stirling," he said, "I can't carry this thing while you stand
there watching me. Do you mind walking on into the bush?"

Ida was not in a very complaisant mood, and she glanced at him coldly.

"If my presence annoys you, I can, of course, go on," she said.

She felt that it was a little paltry when she walked on into the bush,
but her action had been dictated at least as much by curiosity as by
petulance. She fancied that she had set the man a task that was almost
beyond his strength, and, knowing that she could release him from it
at any time, she was anxious to see what he would do. She walked on
some distance, and then sat down to wait until he came up with her,
and when half an hour had slipped by and he failed to appear, she
strolled toward the edge of the wall of rock.

The river swept furiously down a long declivity just there, and the
strip of deeper water flown which one could run a canoe was on the
opposite shore. It would, she fancied, be almost impossible to reach
it from the foot of the rock on which she stood. Then, to her
astonishment, she saw Weston letting the canoe drive down before him
close beneath the rock. There was a short rope made fast to it, and he
alternately floundered almost waist-deep through the pools behind the
craft and dragged it over some thinly-covered ledge. He was very wet,
and looked savage, for his face was set, while by the way he moved she
fancied for the first time that he had hurt himself in his fall. She
could not understand how he had got the canoe down to the river; and
for that matter Weston, who had attempted it in a fit of anger, was
never very sure. Then she became conscious of a certain compunction.
The thing, she felt, had gone quite far enough, and when he drew level
with her she called to him.

"You needn't take any more trouble. I can go on by the trail, after
all," she said.

Weston looked up.

"There's no reason why you should do that," he replied. "I can't leave
the canoe here, anyway, and I can take you in a little lower down."

He went on without waiting for an answer, and though the trail was
very rough she had no difficulty in keeping abreast of him along the
bank. Indeed, she felt that when he reached the spot where she could
join him, he would have gone quite far enough, in view of the progress
he was making. Once or twice he floundered furiously as the stream
swept his feet from under him, and there were times when it seemed to
require all his strength to prevent the canoe from being rolled over
in the white rush of water that poured across some slippery ledge; but
he slowly plodded on, and, though she did not know why, she was glad
that he did so. It was, she was conscious, not altogether because he
was executing her command.

At length she joined him where the river flowed deep and smooth
beneath the pines again; and, when she had taken her place and he
dipped the paddle, she turned to him.

"How did you get the canoe down to the water? The rock is very steep."

"I'm not quite sure," answered Weston. "I think I let it slide.
Anyway, I shoved it over the edge. It went down too quickly for me to
remember exactly what it did. I'm afraid there are a few rather big
scratches on it."

"But how did you get down?"

The man smiled dryly.

"I believe I slid with it."

It occurred to Ida, who was commencing to feel a little ashamed of
having exerted her authority in such a manner, that she could afford
to be generous.

"I'm sorry I put you to so much trouble," she said. "But why didn't
you tell me it would be difficult?"

Weston ceased paddling a moment, and looked at her steadily.

"It's my place to do what I'm told. Besides, you said that you didn't
want to go back by the trail."

A slight flush crept into Ida's face.

"Wouldn't it have been better if you had done as I wanted, and shot
the fall?"

"No," said Weston resolutely, "it wouldn't have been safe."

There was silence for a minute or two, and then Ida spoke again.

"I must admit that I knew the portage would be a little difficult when
you were by yourself, but I didn't think it would give you quite as
much trouble as it has," she said. "Still, I think you should have
told me. After all"--and she seemed to have some difficulty in finding
the right words--"we have never asked you to do anything
unreasonable."

Weston understood that what she meant was that she, at least, had not
treated him as a mere camp-packer, and, as she was quick to notice,
the blood crept into his face. Her manner, which was not conciliatory,
had, also, an unsteadying effect on him.

"Well," he said, with a little laugh, "there are naturally two or
three of my duties which I don't find particularly agreeable, but
that's a very common thing, and you wouldn't expect me to point it
out. They're all in the bargain--and the others make up for them."

She noticed his swift change of expression, and did not urge him to
explain what he meant.

"Anyway, what I have to do is a good deal nicer than handling heavy
rails," he added, with a rather grim smile.

Ida fancied that this was a clumsy attempt to qualify his previous
statement, and she said nothing further until they reached the camp.
Mrs. Kinnaird kept her occupied for the next hour or two; and that
evening when she was sitting on the veranda she heard Grenfell
speaking to his comrade not far away.

"Why did you bring that canoe down?" he asked.

"Miss Stirling wanted it," said Weston.

"What did she want with it, anyway?"

It was evident from Weston's voice that he was not anxious to pursue
that subject.

"I don't know," he said. "It paddles easier than the other one."

"Well," said Grenfell, "you and I are going to have trouble taking the
blame thing up the river again. It's quite different from coming down.
I suppose you shot the fall?"

"I didn't."

Grenfell's tone suggested astonishment.

"You hauled the canoe over the portage! What made you do that, when
you have twice come down the fall?"

Ida started at this, and leaned forward eagerly to catch Weston's
answer.

"I fancied there might be a little risk in it, and I had Miss Stirling
with me."

Ida felt her face grow warm as she remembered that she had twitted him
with having less nerve than the Indians; but Grenfell apparently was
not yet satisfied.

"You could have sent the girl on, and then have shot the fall," he
said. "It would have saved you quite a lot of trouble."

"Oh, yes," agreed Weston, who appeared to resent his curiosity.
"Still, I didn't."

Grenfell moved away, and Ida recognized now that, in spite of a good
deal of provocation, Weston had acted with laudable delicacy. It was
clear that his obduracy in the matter of taking her down the fall had
been due to a regard for her safety. He had also saddled himself with
a laborious task to prevent this fact from becoming apparent. She
fancied that, had she been in his place, she could have arranged the
thing more neatly; but, after all, that did not detract from the
delicacy of his purpose, and she sat very still, with a rather curious
expression in her face, until Grenfell came to announce that supper
was ready.

CHAPTER XV

THE ROCK POOL

Ida was quietly gracious to Weston during the week that followed his
opposition to her wishes at the portage. This was not so much because
she knew she had been wrong in insisting on his taking her down the
fall, for, after all, that matter was a trifling one, but it was more
because she was pleased by the part that he had played. The man, it
seemed, had preferred to face her anger rather than to allow her to
run any personal risk, and afterward had undertaken a very laborious
task to prevent her from discovering why he had borne it. This was as
far as she would go, though she was aware that it left something to be
explained.

In any case, there was a subtle change in her manner toward Weston.
She had never attempted to patronize him, but now she placed him
almost on the footing of an intimate acquaintance. It was done
tactfully and naturally, but Mrs. Kinnaird noticed it, and took alarm.
Why she should do so was not very clear, for Stirling certainly had
not encouraged her to put herself to any trouble on his daughter's
account, but perhaps it was because Ida was going to England, and she
had a well-favored son. It is also possible that, being a lady of
conventional ideas, she acted instinctively and could not help
herself. That a young woman of extensive possessions should encourage
a camp-packer was, from her point of view, unthinkable.

For this reason, perhaps, it was not astonishing that there was for
some little time a quiet battle between the two. When Ida desired to
go fishing, Mrs. Kinnaird suggested something else, or contrived that
the packer should be busy. Failing this, she patiently bore
discomforts from which she usually shrank, and put her companions to a
good deal of trouble by favoring them with her company. The major
naturally did not notice what was going on, and she did not enlighten
him; nor did Weston, for that matter; while Arabella stood aside and
looked on with quiet amusement. It is probable that had Ida stooped to
diplomacy, she would have been beaten, but, as it was, her
uncompromising imperiousness stood her in good stead.

In any case, she went up the river alone with Weston on several
occasions, in spite of Mrs. Kinnaird, and one morning the two sat
together among the boulders beside a pool not far above the fall.
There had been heavy rain, and the stream, which had risen, swirled in
an angry eddy along the rock that rose close in front of them from
that side of the pool. A great drift-log, peeled white, with only
stumps of branches left, had jammed its thinner top on a
half-submerged ledge, and the great butt, which was water borne, every
now and then smote against the rock. The pines along the river were
still wet, and the wilderness was steeped in ambrosial odors. Ida sat
with thoughtful eyes regarding the endless rows of trunks, through
which here and there a ray of dazzling sunlight struck; but her whole
attention was not occupied with that great colonnade.

"I think you were right when you said that the bush gets hold of one,"
she said. "I sometimes feel that I don't want to go back to the cities
at all."

Weston smiled, though there was something curious in his manner. It
seemed to suggest that he was trying to face an unpleasant fact.

"Well," he said, "I told you that would probably be the case. In one
way it's unfortunate, because I suppose you will have to go. You
belong to civilization, and it will certainly claim you."

"And don't you?"

Weston made a little whimsical gesture.

"In the meanwhile, I don't quite know where I belong. It's
perplexing."

Ida noticed the "in the meanwhile." It had, she fancied, a certain
significance, and hinted that by and by he expected to be more sure of
his station.

"You don't wish to go back?" she asked.

"No," said Weston decisively. "Anyway, not to the packed
boarding-house and the flour-mill. Even in winter, when these rivers
are frozen hard and the pines stand white and motionless under the
Arctic frost, this is a good deal nicer."

"You're getting away from the point," said Ida, laughing. "I meant to
England."

Weston leaned forward a little, looking at her with a curious
expression in his eyes.

"For three or four months in the year England is the most beautiful
country in the world," he said. "We haven't your great pines and
foaming rivers, but, even in the land from which I come in the rugged
north, every valley is a garden. It's all so smooth and green and well
cared for. One could fancy that somebody loved every inch of it--once
you get outside the towns. I said the dales were gardens--in summer
they're more like Paradise."

It was evident that the exile's longing for the old land was awake
within him, and Ida nodded sympathetically.

"Won't you go on?" she begged.

"Ah!" said Weston. "If I could make you see them--the wonderful green
of the larch woods, the bronze of the opening oaks, and the smooth
velvet pastures between the little river and the gleaming limestone at
the foot of the towering fell! All is trimmed and clipped and cared
for, down to the level hedgerows and the sod on the roadside banks,
and every here and there white hamlets, with little old-world
churches, nestle among-the trees. You see, it has grown ripe and
mellow, while your settlements are crude and new."

The girl sat silent a brief space. She had read of the old country,
and seen pictures of it, and it seemed to her that his term, a garden,
described parts, at least, of it rather efficiently.

Then, though he had already assured her that he meant to stay in the
bush, she wondered whether he never longed to gather a flower of that
trim garden. In fact, it suddenly became a question of some moment to
her.

"You will go back to it some day?"

"No," said Weston, with a little wry smile; "I don't think so. After
all, why should I?"

Ida was sensible of a certain satisfaction, but she desired to make
more sure.

"There must be somebody you would wish to see, or somebody who would
care to see you?"

"Ah," said Weston, "the failures are soon forgotten over yonder.