a sound, save the cony at the mouth of the spiral shaft, which
sinks to his deeply buried den in the rocks. The peaks are like marble
domes, set high in the pathway of the sun by day and thrust amid the
stars by night. The firs seem hopeless under their ever-increasing
burdens. The streams are silenced--only the wind is abroad in the waste,
the tireless, pitiless wind, fanged like ingratitude, insatiate as fire.

But it is beautiful, nevertheless, especially of a clear dawn, when the
shadows are vividly purple and each rime-wreathed summit is smit with
ethereal fire, and each eastern slope is resplendent as a high-way of
powdered diamonds--or at sunset, when the high crests of the range stand
like flaming mile-stones leading to the Celestial City, and the lakes
are like pools of pure gold caught in a robe of green velvet. Yet always
this land demands youth and strength in its explorer.

King Frost's dominion was already complete over all the crests, over
timber-line, when young Captain Curtis set out to cross the divide which
lay between Lake Congar and Fort Sherman--a trip to test the virtue of a
Sibley tent and the staying qualities of a mountain horse.

Bennett, the hairy trapper at the head of the lake, advised against it.
"The snow is soft--I reckon you better wait a week."

But Curtis was a seasoned mountaineer and took pride in assaulting the
stern barrier. "Besides, my leave of absence is nearly up," he said to
the trapper.

"Well, you're the doctor," the old trapper replied. "Good luck to ye,
Cap."

It was sunrise of a crisp, clear autumn morning when they started, and
around them the ground was still bare, but by noon they were wallowing
mid-leg deep in new-fallen snow. Curtis led the way on foot--his own
horse having been packed to relieve the burdens of the others--while
Sergeant Pierce, resolute and uncomplaining, brought up the rear.

"We must camp beside the sulphur spring to-night," Curtis said, as they
left timber-line and entered upon the bleak, wind-swept slopes of
Grizzly Bear.

"Very well, sir," Pierce cheerily replied, and till three o'clock they
climbed steadily towards the far-off glacial heights, the drifts ever
deepening, the cold ever intensifying. They had eaten no food since
dawn, and the horses were weak with hunger and weariness as they topped
the divide and looked down upon the vast eastern slope. The world before
them seemed even more inhospitable and wind-swept than the land the