yed timidly about in
the twilight, or perhaps a wandering deer peering his wide-eyed
curiosity from the timber's edge. The books and rugs and curtains were
stowed in boxes and bundles and hung by wires to the ridge log to keep
them from the busy bush-tailed rats. Everything was done up carefully
and put away for safekeeping, as became a house that is to be long
untenanted.

The mother instinct to keep a nest snug and cozy gave her a tiny pang
over the abandoned home. The dust of many months would gather on the
empty chairs and shelves. Still it was only a passing absence. They
would come back, with treasure wrested from the strong box of the wild.
Surely Fortune could not forbear smiling on a mate like hers?

There was no monotony in the passing days. Rivers barred their way.
These they forded or swam, or ferried a makeshift raft of logs, as
seemed most fit. Once their raft came to grief in the maw of a
snarling current, and they laid up two days to dry their saturated
belongings. Once their horses, impelled by some mysterious home
yearning, hit the back trail in a black night of downpour, and they
trudged half a day through wet grass and dripping scrub to overtake the
truants. Thunderstorms drove up, shattering the hush of the land with
ponderous detonations, assaulting them with fierce bursts of rain.
Haps and mishaps alike they accepted with an equable spirit and the
true philosophy of the trail--to take things as they come. When rain
deluged them, there was always shelter to be found and fire to warm
them. If the flies assailed too fiercely, a smudge brought easement of
that ill. And when the land lay smiling under a pleasant sun, they
rode light-hearted and care-free, singing or in silent content, as the
spirit moved. If they rode alone, they felt none of that loneliness
which is so integral a part of the still, unpeopled places. Each day
was something more than a mere toll of so many miles traversed. The
unexpected, for which both were eager-eyed, lurked on the shoulder of
each mountain, in the hollow of every cool canon, or met them boldly in
the open, naked and unafraid.

Bearing up to where the Nachaco debouches from Fraser Lake, with a
Hudson's Bay fur post and an Indian mission on its eastern fringe, they
came upon a blazed line in the scrub timber. Roaring Bill pulled up,
and squinted away down the narrow lane fresh with ax marks.

"Well," said he, "I wonder what's coming off now? That l