"When are we going to visit the camp?" she asked, changing the subject.

"As soon as it warms up a little. It is too cold for you."

She had a laugh at him. "You were the one who wanted to 'plunge into the
snowy vistas.'"

He evaded her joke on him by assuming a careless tone. "I'm not plunging
as much as I was; the snow is too deep."

"When you go I want to go with you--I want to see Williams."

"Ha!" he snorted melodramatically. "She scorns me faithful heart. She
turns----"

Mrs. Field smiled faintly. "Don't joke about it Ed. I can't get that
wife out of my mind."

III.

A few very cold gray days followed, and then the north wind cleared the
sky; and, though it was still cold, it was pleasant. The sky had only a
small white cloud here and there to make its blueness the more profound.

Ridgeley dashed up to the door with a hardy little pair of bronchos
hitched to a light pair of bobs, and Mrs. Field was tucked in like a
babe in a cradle.

Almost the first thing she asked was, "How is Williams?"

"Oh, he's getting on nicely. He refused to sleep with his bunk mate, and
finally had to lick him, I understand, to shut him up. Challenged the
whole camp then to let him alone or take a licking. They let him alone,
Lawson says.--G'lang there, you rats!"

Mrs. Field said no more, for the air was whizzing by her ears, and she
hardly dared look out, so keen was the wind, but as soon as they entered
the deeps of the forest it was profoundly still.

The ride that afternoon was a glory she never forgot. Everywhere
yellow-greens and purple shadows. The sun in a burnished blue sky
flooded the forests with light, striking down through even the thickest
pines to lay in fleckings of radiant white and gold upon the snow.

The trail (it was not a road) ran like a graceful furrow over the
hills, around little lakes covered deep with snow, through tamarack
swamps where the tracks of wild things thickened, over ridges of tall
pine clear of brush, and curving everywhere amid stumps, where
dismantled old shanties marked the site of the older logging camps.
Sometimes they met teams going to the store. Sometimes they crossed
logging roads--wide, smooth tracks artificially iced, down which
mountainous loads of logs were slipping, creaking and groaning.
Sometimes they heard the dry click-clock of the woodsmen's axes, or the
crash of falling trees deep in the wood. When they reached the first
camp, Ridgeley pulled up the steamin