t."

But the Bishop could not be persuaded of this, and urged upon
Macmillan the necessity of eliminating this part of his persuasion.

"Just as you say, Your Riverence. I ain't hurried this trip and
we'll do our best."

The next bad sleugh brought opportunity to make experiment of the
new system. The team stuck fast in the black muck, and every effort
to extricate them served only to imbed them more hopelessly in the
sticky gumbo. Time passed on. A dark and lowering night was imminent.
The Bishop grew anxious. Macmillan, with whip and voice, encouraged
his team, but all in vain. The Bishop's anxiety increased with the
approach of a threatening storm.

"It is growing late, Mr. Macmillan, and it looks like rain.
Something must be done."

"It does that, Your Lordship, but the brutes won't pull half their
own weight without I speak to them in the way they are used to."

The good man was in a sore strait. Another half hour passed, and
still with no result. It was imperative that his goods should be
brought under cover before the storm should break. Again the good
Bishop urged Macmillan to more strenuous effort.

"We can't stay here all night, sir," he said. "Surely something
can be done."

"Well, I'll tell Your Lordship, it's one of two things, stick or
swear, and there's nothing else for it."

"Well, well, Mr. Macmillan," said the Bishop resignedly, "we must
get on. Do as you think best, but I take no responsibility in the
matter." At which Pilate's counsel he retired from the scene,
leaving Macmillan an untrammelled course.

Macmillan seized the reins from the ground, and walking up and down
the length of his six-horse team, began to address them singly and
in the mass in terms so sulphurously descriptive of their ancestry,
their habits, and their physical and psychological characteristics,
that when he gave the word in a mighty culminating roar of blasphemous
excitation, each of the bemired beasts seemed to be inspired with a
special demon, and so exerted itself to the utmost limit of its powers
that in a single minute the load stood high and dry on solid ground.

One other characteristic made Macmillan one of the most trusted of
the freighters upon the trail. While in charge of his caravan he
was an absolute teetotaler, making up, however, for this abstinence
at the end of the trip by a spree whose duration was limited only
by the extent of his credit.

It was to Mr. Macmillan's care that Mrs. French had