ood with aching shoulders amidst the
dripping pines. He could hear the rattle of the twigs that met and
brushed through the shrill wailing of the wind about the sombre spires
that pierced the growing darkness far above him, and the harmonic
murmuring that rose and fell in cadence along the dim, vaulted roof.
There was, however, nothing else beyond the growl of a rapid somewhere
up the valley, and stretching out his arms wearily, he stooped with a
little smile that was grim rather than mirthful and caught up the axe.

Now one can usually hear the thudding of the axe a mile or more in the
stillness of the woods that is not silence to the bushman's ear. Their
voice is always musical, and the sounds that man makes jar through its
harmonies, but only a forest rancher or free prospector would have
caught the muffled sound, that was lost in the song of the pines a few
score yards from Alton's camp. He knew where to find the resinous
knots with their sticky exudations, and was a master of the axe, while
it was noticeable that when the fire commenced to crackle he stood
still and listened again before he went down to the river with the
kettle. Nor did he at once return into the light, but slipped for a
moment behind a wide-girthed trunk. It was only a deer he heard moving
along the hillside above him, and there was nothing visible but the row
of stupendous columns that appeared and vanished as the red light rose
and sank. Alton set the kettle down amidst the flame, and unrolling
one of the packages laid out his supper.

It was prepared and eaten in twenty minutes, and refilling the kettle
for breakfast he lay smoking in a hollow between the great roots which
crawled away from a cedar-trunk. Nothing moved in the bush now but a
bear that was grubbing amidst the wild cabbage in a swamp, and the
weary man, stretching out his hand instinctively to touch the rifle
that lay within his reach, gave himself up to thought. He had also
much to occupy him, and being a somewhat systematic person he proceeded
to consider the questions that demanded an answer in what appeared to
him their order of importance. It was characteristic that in face of
recent events he placed the probable whereabouts of the silver first.

This was at the first glance a somewhat difficult problem. In front of
him lay the wilderness, a trackless chaos of forest and rock and snow
wherein he had to find the scar made by a stick of giant powder or the
scratchi