n the ground. Lewis sent word that thirty feet of snow lay
in the gold-bearing branch. And that was the last they heard from him.
He was a performer, Bill said, not a correspondent.

So in Granville the affairs of the Free Gold Mining Company remained at
a standstill until the spring floods should peel off the winter blanket
of the North. Hazel was fully occupied, and Bill dwelt largely with
his books, or sketched and figured on operations at the claims. Their
domestic affairs moved with the smoothness of a perfectly balanced
machine. To the very uttermost Hazel enjoyed the well-appointed
orderliness of it all, the unruffled placidity of an existence where
the unexpected, the disagreeable, the uncouth, was wholly eliminated,
where all the strange shifts and struggles of her two years beyond the
Rockies were altogether absent and impossible. Bill's views he kept
largely to himself. And Hazel began to nurse the idea that he was
looking upon civilization with a kindlier eye.

Ultimately, spring overspread the eastern provinces. And when the
snows of winter successively gave way to muddy streets and then to
clean pavements in the city of Granville, a new gilt sign was lettered
across the windows of the brokerage office in which Paul Lorimer was
housed.

FREE GOLD MINING COMPANY

P. H. Lorimer, Pres. J. L. Brooks, Sec.-Treas.

William Wagstaff, Manager.

So it ran. Bill was commissioned in the army of business at last.

CHAPTER XXVII

A BUSINESS JOURNEY

"I have to go to the Klappan," Bill apprised his wife one evening.
"Want to come along?"

Hazel hesitated. Her first instinctive feeling was one of reluctance
to retrace that nerve-trying trail. But neither did she wish to be
separated from him.

"I see you don't," he observed dryly. "Well, I can't say that I blame
you. It's a stiff trip. If your wind and muscle are in as poor shape
as mine, I guess it would do you up--the effort would be greater than
any possible pleasure."

"I'm sorry I can't feel any enthusiasm for such a journey," she
remarked candidly. "I could go as far as the coast with you, and meet
you there when you come out. How long do you expect to be in there?"

"I don't know exactly," he replied. "I'm not going in from the coast,
though. I'm taking the Ashcroft-Fort George Trail. I have to take in
a pack train and more men and get work started on a decent scale."

"But you won't have to stay there