re,
he decided to camp where a big cedar lay across a little ravine that
rent the bank. It promised to afford him a partial shelter. He had no
axe, but he tore off an armful or two of the thinner branches, with
the twigs attached to them, to form a bed, and then, crawling down to
the river, filled his smoke-blackened can and came back wearily to
make a fire. Man needs very little in those solitudes, but there are
two things he must have, and those are food to keep the strength in
him, and warmth, though there are times when he finds it singularly
difficult to make the effort to obtain them. The most unpleasant hour
of the long day of persistent toil is often the one when worn-out
muscle and jaded intelligence must be forced to the task of providing
the evening meal and shelter for the night.

Nasmyth ate his supper, so far as it went, voraciously, but with a
prudent check upon his appetite, for he had set out with only four
days' provisions, and he could not find the tree. When he had eaten,
he took out his pipe, and crouched a while beside the fire, shivering,
in spite of the blankets wrapped about him. The heat dies out of the
man who has marched for twenty hours, as those who have done it know.
In the meanwhile, darkness crept up from the east, and the pines faded
into sombre masses that loomed dimly against a leaden sky. A mournful
wailing came out of the gloom, and the smoke whirled about the
shivering man in the nipping wind, while the sound of the river's
turmoil and the crash of stream-driven ice drifted up out of the
canyon. Nasmyth listened drowsily, while his thoughts wandered back to
the loggers' shanty. He could see the men with bronzed faces sitting
smoking about the snapping stove, two or three of them dancing, while
Jacques coaxed music full of fire from his battered fiddle.

Then his thoughts went farther back to the chambers that he had once
occupied in London, and he saw himself and Frobisher, who shared them
with him, sitting at a little table daintily furnished with choice
glass and silver covers. There were big candles upon it--Frobisher,
who was a fastidious man, had insisted upon them. After that, the
artistically furnished room faded out of his memory, and he recalled a
larger one in which he had now and then dined. He could picture the
wine, and lights, and costly dresses, the smiling faces of those who
had at that time expected a great deal from him, and he saw the girl
who usually sat at hi