ts and the yawning canyons of the Rocky Mountains.

Years before Canada had constructed her world-famous transcontinental
railroad, which now stretches its belt of steel from Atlantic to
Pacific, Maurice Delorme set out for the golden West, working his way
across the vast Canadian half of the American continent. He had done
everything for a living--that is, everything that was honorable, for his
British-French-Indian blood was the blood of honest forefathers, and he
prided himself that he could directly and bravely look into the eyes of
any man living; for, after all, does not dishonesty make the eyes shift
and the heart cowardly?

He had trapped for fur-bearing animals on the North Shores; he had
twice fought the rebels at the Red River; he had freighted many and
many a "prairie schooner" from the Assiniboine to the Saskatchewan; and
then, one glorious morning in July, when the hot yellow sun poured its
wealth of heat and light into the velvety plains of Alberta, Maurice
descried at the very edge of the western horizon a far-off speck of
shining white, apparently not larger than a single lump of sugar. As
day followed day, and he traversed mile upon mile, more sugar lumps were
visible; and, below their whiteness, the grayish distances grew into
mountain shapes. Then he realized that at last he beheld the inimitable
glory of the Rockies that swept in snow-tipped grandeur from south to
north.

Then followed the years when he, his wife and a little Maurice lived
in the fastnesses of those mighty ranges; when he learned to know and
follow the trail of the mountain goat; when the rugged passes grew
familiar to him as the little village where he had been born in Quebec;
when the countless forests of Douglas fir held no mysteries and no fears
for him; and, because he had learned these things, because he was brave
and courageous, because his life had been clean and honest, he was
selected to carry His Majesty's mails from a primitive "landing" on one
of the Kootenay Lakes to the great gold mines, forty miles into the
interior, and over one of the wildest, loneliest mountain trails in all
British Columbia.

Then it was that, once a month, when the mail came in by the tiny
steamer, Maurice Delorme would harness up his six tough little
mountain-climbing horses, put on his cartridge belt, tuck a formidable
revolver into his hip pocket and a good gun beneath the seat of the
wagon, toss in the bags of mail and the express packag