he has come
with Kate from England, and he left her nursing at Bolt Taylor's
bedside. She is sending Surly Brown from Soda Creek with a cable, to
build a new scow, and start the ferry again. Ransome Pollock's to manage
the Trevor ranch. Iron's to reopen the Sky-line while she makes his
peace with the owners--O'Flynn wants to run the packing. She is finding
a doctor to take McGee's practise. Tearful George is to buy an imported
stallion, and drift him with a bunch of East Oregon mares to stock my
empty pastures. The dead settlement is to live again as though there had
been no Polly to rob, ruin, and murder among our pioneers. And then my
wife will send young Englishmen to school with me for training.

Stroke by stroke this Mr. O'Flynn comes lashing home the news into my
hide, as though I were being flogged. He says he hated me always, but
never despised me before as he does now. My wife and I should change
clothes, only I'd be too useless for a woman. Iron says the same, and in
a most unchristian way I thrashed the pair, knocking their heads
together, for putting me too much in the wrong while I wanted my
breakfast. They think there's something in my argument.

The news is better for being discussed, and best of all I reckon this
man Eure who is to side-track Polly, building a town at the foot of the
Hundred Mile Falls. The pines on the high land, too small a trash for
lumber, are good enough for pulp to feed a mill, while paper is the
plate from which we eat our knowledge. I see the black bush turning into
books, the lands in oats or pasture till they're warmed for wheat, and
when we come to the rocks there's marble to build colleges for our sons,
gold to endow them. The land too poor for any other crop, is best for
raising men.

It's only because I'm happy I write nonsense, feeling this night as
though I were being cured of all my blindness. I have a sense that
though I sit in darkness, my wife is with me, and if my eyes were
opened, I should see her. Is it our weakness which gives such strength
to love?

CHAPTER IV

AT HUNDRED MILE HOUSE

_Kate's Narrative_

Mr. Eure inspected the woods and water-power, then departed for the
coast, secretly to buy timber limits, avowedly to find a nurse and a
doctor.

Mr. Tom Faulkner, his engineer, surveyed, then let contracts for
temporary snow road, log buildings at the falls, and a telegraph line
which would secure our business from being known at Polly's post-