this enterprise I was not as confident as I appeared, for the problem
was not simple. "The girl who can consent to be my wife must needs have
a generous heart and a broad mind, to understand (and share) the humble
conditions of my life, and to tolerate the simple, old-fashioned notions
of my people. It will not be easy," I acknowledged. "I can not afford to
make a mistake--one that will bring grief and not happiness to the
homestead and its mistress."

However, I decided to let that worry stand over. "Sufficient unto the
day is the evil thereof," was a saying which my father often
repeated--and yet I was nearing the dead line! I was thirty-eight.

That first night of my return to the valley was of such rich and tender
beauty that all the suffering, the hardships of my exploration were
forgotten. The moon was at its full, and while the crickets and the
katydids sang in unison, the hills dreamed in the misty distance like
vast, peaceful, patient, crouching animals. The wheat and corn burdened
the warm wind with messages of safely-garnered harvests, and my mind,
reacting to the serenity, the peace, the opulence of it all, was at
rest. The dark swamps of the Bulkley, the poisonous plants of the
Skeena, the endless ice-cold marshes of the high country, the stinging
insects of the tundra, and the hurtling clouds of the White Pass, all
seemed events of another and more austere planet.

On the day following the fair, just as I was stripping my coat and
rolling my sleeves to help my father fence in a pasture for Ladrone, a
neighbor came along bringing a package from the post office. It was a
book, a copy of my _Life of Grant_, the first I had seen; and, as I
opened it I laughed, for I bore little resemblance to a cloistered
historian at the moment. My face was the color of a worn saddle; my
fingers resembled hooks of bronze, and my feet carried huge, hob-nail
shoes. "What would Dr. Brander Matthews, Colonel Church and Howells, who
had warmly commended the book, think of me at this moment?" I asked
myself.

Father was interested, of course, but he was not one to permit a
literary interest to interfere with a very important job. "Bring that
spade," commanded he, and putting my history on top of a post, I set to
work, digging another hole, rejoicing in my strength, for at that time I
weighed one hundred and eighty pounds, all bone and muscle. So much the
trail had done for me.

I had broadened my palms to the cinch and the axe