ed to-morrow after all these years we bin together, and you're going
down to Selby from the mountains, where I won't see you, not once in a
blue moon. Only that old trollop, Mother Massy, to look after me."

"Come down to Selby and live there. You'll be welcome by Jake and me."

He stood his gun in the corner and, swinging the pigeons in his hand,
said: "Me live out of the mountains! Don't you know better than that? I
couldn't breathe, and I wouldn't want to breathe. I've got my shack here,
I got my fur business, and they're still fond of whiskey up North!" He
chuckled to himself, as he thought of the illicit still farther up the
mountain behind them. "I make enough to live on, and I've put a few
dollars by, though I won't have so many after to-morrow, after I've given
you a little pile, Jinny."

"P'r'aps there won't be any _to-morrow_, as you expect," she said,
slowly.

The old man started. "What! you and Jake ain't quarrelled again? You ain't
broke it off at the last moment, same as before? You ain't had a letter
from Jake?" He looked at the white petticoat on the chair-back, and shook
his head in bewilderment.

"I've had no letter," she answered. "I've had no letter from Selby for a
month. It was all settled then, and there was no good writing, when he was
coming to-morrow with the minister and the license. Who do you think'd be
postman from Selby here? It must have cost him ten dollars to send the
last letter."

"Then what's the matter? I don't understand," the old man urged,
querulously. He did not want her to marry and leave him, but he wanted no
more troubles; he did not relish being asked awkward questions by every
mountaineer he met as to why Jenny Long didn't marry Jake Lawson.

"There's only one way that I can be married to-morrow," she said, at last,
"and that's by you taking a man down the Dog Nose Rapids to Bindon
to-night."

He dropped the pigeons on the floor, dumfounded. "What in--"

He stopped short, in sheer incapacity to go further. Jenny had not always
been easy to understand, but she was wholly incomprehensible now.

She picked up the pigeons and was about to speak, but she glanced at the
bedroom door, where her exhausted visitor had stretched himself on her
bed, and beckoned her uncle to another room.

"There's a plate of vittles ready for you in there," she said. "I'll tell
you as you eat."

He followed her into the little living-room adorned by the trophies of his
earlier achieveme