ared to
'em was, slumber and grub in the mornin'!" To which sentiment Bunco
grinned hearty assent, as he unloaded and hobbled the pack-horses.

Soon the camp was made. The fire roared grandly up among the branches
of the trees. The kettle sent forth savoury smells and clouds of steam.
The tired steeds munched the surrounding herbage in quiet felicity, and
the travellers lay stretched upon a soft pile of brushwood, loading
their pipes and enjoying supper by anticipation. The howling of a wolf,
and the croaking of some bird of prey, formed an appropriate duet, to
which the trickling of a clear rill of ice-cold water, near by,
constituted a sweet accompaniment, while through the stems of the trees
they could scan--as an eagle does from his eyrie high up on the cliffs--
one of the grandest mountain scenes in the world, bathed in the soft
light of the moon in its first quarter.

"'Tis a splendid view of God's handiwork," said the trapper, observing
the gaze of rapt admiration with which Will Osten surveyed it.

"It is indeed most glorious," responded Will, "a scene that inclines one
to ask the question, If earth be so fair, what must heaven be?"

"It aint easy to answer that," said the trapper gravely, and with a
slight touch of perplexity in a countenance which usually wore that
expression of calm self-reliance peculiar to men who have thorough
confidence in themselves. "Seems to me that there's a screw loose in
men's thoughts when they come to talk of heaven. The Redskins, now,
think it's a splendid country where the weather is always fine, the sun
always shining, and the game plentiful. Then the men of the settlement
seem to have but a hazy notion about its bein' a place of happiness, but
they can't tell why or wherefore in a very comprehensible sort o' way,
and, as far as I can see, they're in no hurry to get there. It seems in
a muddle somehow, an' that's a thing that surprises me, for the works o'
the Almighty--hereaway in the mountains--are plain and onderstandable,
so as a child might read 'em; but man's brains don't seem to be such
perfect work, for, when he comes to talk o' God and heaven, they appear
to me to work as if they wor out o' jint."

The trapper was a naturally earnest, matter-of-fact man, but knew little
or nothing of the Christian religion, except what he had heard of it
from the lips of men who, having neither knowledge of it nor regard for
it themselves, gave a false report both of its bl