foolish to go up into the ranges in winter?" Ida
asked.

"It was," admitted Weston, with a faint, dry smile. "Still, you see, I
couldn't stay away. The thing has become an obsession."

Ida fancied that she understood. He had on several occasions revealed
to her his stubborn pride, and she knew that, whatever he thought of
her, he would keep it to himself unless he found that mine. She also
had some idea of what one would have to face floundering over the
snow-barred passes into the great desolation in winter time.

"Well," she asked quietly, "what did you do then?"

"We worked in a logging camp until spring, and then I went down to
Vancouver to raise money for the next campaign. Nobody seemed inclined
to let me have any, for which one couldn't very well blame them. After
all," and Weston laughed softly, "the thing looks uncommonly crazy.
Later on, we got a pass to do some track-grading back east, on one of
the prairie lines, and when we'd saved a few dollars I started to try
my luck in Montreal."

Ida said nothing for a few moments. She could fill in most of what he
left untold, and it seemed to her that one who knew how men lived in
the lonely logging camps through the iron winter, or drove the new
track across the prairie through the thaw slush in spring, could make
an epic of such a theme. It was toil that taxed man's utmost strength
of body and mind, under the Arctic frost, and, what was even worse to
bear, in half-thawed mire. She had once seen the track-graders
trooping back, wet to the skin, worn out, and clogged with soil to the
knees, to the reeking shanty which was filled with the foul steam of
drying clothes. As the result of it all, Weston had, perhaps, saved
less money than she often spent on one gown. She felt very
compassionate toward him, and he was troubled by the softness in her
eyes. He felt that if he watched her too closely he might lose his
head.

"I tried to study a few works on trigonometry and surveying during the
winter, but it was a little difficult," he said. "For one thing, if
you sat near the stove in the logging shack the light was dim, and you
couldn't very well read anywhere else in the frost we had. Besides
that, the boys generally insisted on everybody's playing cards, and if
any one refused they had a playful trick of throwing things at him."

The girl, who had imagination, could picture the dimly-lighted shanty
and the bronzed and ragged men flinging their long boots, as well