h and breakfast; I'll square the storekeeper for you."

Thurston accepted the chance that offered him a sustaining meal, but he
did not explain that, owing to some faint trace of superstition in his
nature, he intended to keep Helen Savine's dollar. It was the first
coin that he had earned as his own master, in the Dominion, and he felt
that the successfully-executed contract marked a turning point in his
career.

CHAPTER IV

GEOFFREY MAKES PROGRESS

Thurston did justice to his breakfast at Bransome's ranch, and he
frankly informed his host that he had found it difficult to exist on
two handfuls of crackers and one of hot corn cakes. When the meal was
finished and pipes were lighted, the two men surveyed each other with
mutual interest. They were not unlike in physique, for the Colonial,
was, as is usual with his kind, lean and wiry. His quick, restless
movements suggested nervous energy, but when advisable, he could assume
the bovine stolidity which, though foreign to his real nature, the
Canadian bushman occasionally adopts for diplomatic purposes.
Thurston, however, still retained certain traits of the Insular Briton,
including a curtness of speech and a judicious reserve.

"That blame lake backs up on my meadows each time the creek rises,"
Bransome observed at length. "The snow melts fast in hay-time, and,
more often than I like, a freshet harvests my timothy grass for me.
Now cutting down three-hundred-foot redwoods is good as exercise, but
it gets monotonous, and a big strip of natural prairie would be
considerably more useful than a beaver's swimming bath. You said you
could blow a channel through the rocks that hold up the outlet, didn't
you?"

"I can!" Geoffrey asserted confidently. "From some knowledge of mining
I am inclined to think that a series of heavy charges fired
simultaneously along the natural cleavage would reduce the lake's level
at least a fathom. Have you got a pencil?"

Here it was that the national idiosyncrasies of the men became
apparent; for Thurston, leaning on one elbow, made an elaborate sketch
and many calculations with Bransome's pencil. A humming-bird,
resplendent in gold and purple, blundered in between the roses
shrouding the open window, and hovered for a moment above him on
invisible wings. Thurston did not notice the bird, but Bransome flung
a crust at it as he smiled on his companion.

"We'll take the figures for granted. Life is too short to worry over