ding Englishmen who lived on beef and beer.
Though Weston was naturally not aware of it, there were respects in
which Ida Stirling was like his mother. Ida, however, usually kept her
deeper thoughts to herself, which Mrs. Weston had seldom done, but she
shaped her life by them, and they were wholesome.

"Well," he said diffidently, "it was quite a humiliating situation for
the old man. He was a person of some consequence once--a rather famous
assayer and mineralogist--and I think he felt it."

"That is not what I asked you," said Ida, with a trace of dryness.

Weston spread out his hands as though to excuse himself.

"Then," he said, "they were all against him, and I think Jake--I mean
the big chopper--would have forced the stuff down his throat. It was
horribly burnt. There are," and he hesitated, "things one really has
to do."

His companion nodded. She liked his diffidence, which, while very
evident, was wholly genuine, and the faint color in his face gave him
an appearance of boyish candor.

"Even when the odds against you are quite steep?" she said. "In the
case we are discussing the result was no doubt that bruise on your
face." Then she changed the subject. "If he was a famous mineralogist,
why is he cooking in a railroad camp?"

"Everybody knows," said Weston. "The usual trouble--whisky."

The girl made a little gesture of comprehension that had in it also a
hint of disgust, and then seeing that he would say nothing further
until she gave him a lead she spoke again.

"What brought you out here?" she inquired.

Weston had been asked the same question several times before, and had
never answered it. In fact, he did not know why he did so now.

"I quarreled with my people. In one respect, anyway, I don't regret
it. It's rather a beautiful country."

He sat, with his wide hat tilted back and the sun on his face, looking
out upon the blue lake between the towering pines. Their shadows
floated in it, and tremendous slopes of rock ran up toward the
gleaming snow on the farther side. The bush lay very silent under the
scorching sun, and it was filled with the heavy odors of the firs, in
which there was a clogging, honey-like sweetness.

"It's a little difficult to understand why you seem to be content with
track-grading. One would fancy it to be unusually hard work," said the
girl.

"Oh, yes," agreed Weston, laughing. "Still, you see, I don't intend to
remain a track-grader indefinitely."

"No?" said