t has no
use for the man who wants to sit still and think about his dinner while
other folks work for him."

"Still, he may have earned the right to do so," said the girl.

"Well," said Alton grimly, "most of that kind I've met with seemed to
have stolen it, and one or two of them had, for a few thousand dollars,
sent good men to their death. When you've seen your comrades sickening
and starving on rotten provisions in the snow, or washed out down the
valley by the bursting of a dam that was only built to sell, you begin
to wonder whether it would be wrong to wipe out some of that crowd with
the rifle."

The veins swelled on his forehead, and there was a smouldering fire in
his eyes, while the girl suspected he was alluding to some especial
member of the class, and noticed that his eye seemed to follow the
smoke of the Tyee. Then he laughed.

"I guess I'm talking nonsense again, but there's a little behind it,
and I feel that you can pick it out," he said. "Now I'm not good at
amusing women, but you and Mrs. Jimmy seem to understand me."

"Who is Mrs. Jimmy, and does her husband belong to Somasco?" asked the
girl, with a smile.

Alton laid down the paddle, and took off his hat. "Jimmy," he said
solemnly, "is dead. He was my partner, and his wife is a friend of
mine. She was in some ways very like you."

"They had a ranch up here?" said Miss Deringham languidly.

"No," said Alton. "It wasn't often they had ten dollars. She was a
lady bar-keep down in Vancouver before she married Jimmy. He was a
trail-chopper in this country. I don't know what he was in the old
one."

"And," said Miss Deringham, "Mrs. Jimmy resembles me?"

She regretted it next moment when she saw Alton's face. It expressed
subdued surprise, and the girl felt irritated with herself.

"Yes," he said gravely. "Human nature's much the same at the bottom,
whether it has gold on the top of it or the dints of the hammer, and
Mrs. Jimmy was good all through."

"That," said Miss Deringham, "is distinctly pretty."

"Well," said Alton smiling, "I didn't mean it that way. Work was
scarce in the province, and I'd lost my cattle when Jimmy went up with
me into the ranges to look for silver. He brought his wife along,
because he had no dollars or anywhere to leave her, and it was a mighty
tough place for a woman where we camped under the big glacier. We
stayed right there most of the winter. There was only frost and snow,
and the wind t