t the low house, and at the end one window dimly lighted, which
told me my friend still lived. While Tom, the assistant, stabled the
team, Mr. Eure and Billy got snow shovels from the barn, and hewed out a
way to the deep drifted door at the near end of the building. Presently
the Chinese servant let us in, and I made my way through the barroom and
dining-hall to that far door on the right. How changed was the grand old
Hundred since the days, only five years ago, of pompous assizes,
banquets, dances, when these rooms overflowed with light, warmth, and
comfort, now dark, in Arctic cold, in haunted silence! I crept into the
captain's room, where, in an arm-chair beside the stove, the old man
lay. I knelt beside him, taking his dreadfully swollen hand.

"Dear wife," he muttered, whose wife must have been dead full forty
years, "this hulk is going to be laid up soon, in Rotten Row. Can't all
of us founder in action."

I ran away. But then there was much to be done, fires, lights, supper,
beds, and the unloading of the sleigh full of hospital comforts, which
would set my patient a great deal more at ease.

When I left my patient, very late that night, supposing all lucky people
to be in bed, I found Mr. Eure making himself some tea. Gladly I joined
him beside the kitchen stove, ever so pleased with its warmth and the
tea, for I was weary, past all hope of any sleep. Besides, the poor man
was just dying with curiosity as to our journey and his engagement as my
engineer. So, for that one and only time I told the story of Jesse's
fate, and mine. The creature would stop me at times to check the
pronunciation of words, or note the English manner of placing accents,
his own odd way of showing sympathy.

And then I tried to explain the scheme which needed his services as an
engineer.

"Let's see," he checked my rambling statement. "Try if I've got all that
correct. This Cariboo wagon road runs from Ashcroft to Quesnelle, due
north, except at one point where the government wouldn't pay for a
bridge across the Hundred Mile gorge.

"So at the ninety-five-mile post the road swings eastward five miles,
passing Spite House to the head of the gorge, where it crosses Hundred
Mile Creek, right here.

"From here the road turns west again on the north side of the gorge, and
after one mile on the level, drops down the Hundred Mile Hill, which is
three miles high, and a terror to navigation.

"At the bottom the road turns north again