water, and I have a notion that I can find the precious metals too.
Quite absurd, isn't it?"

Ida thought it was, but the quiet confidence behind his whimsical
manner appealed to her. He was, it seemed, a man of simple character
and few ideas, but she knew that he had nerve and vigor, and, after
all, the western Dominion is the land of strenuous, all-daring, simple
men. Besides, she had watched the resolution flash into his young face
when he stood facing the angry crowd of track-graders with the ax in
his hand, and she had seen very much the same tenacity and
steadfastness stamped on the faces of successful men. Her father was
one, and he was a man who had scarcely been educated, and was
certainly devoid of any complexity of character. Stirling had made his
mark by smashing down opposition, and, when that was not possible,
grimly holding on and bearing the blows dealt him. There was, as she
recognized, something to be said in favor of that kind of man.

Then Kinnaird came up through the bush with his rod and a few
troutlings, dry-shod and immaculate in a jacket that fitted him like a
uniform, and Ida went back to camp with him. She fancied, however,
that her father or Weston, who sat still and filled his pipe again,
would have come back with a heavy fish, or at least thorn-rent and
dripping wet.

CHAPTER IV

IDA'S FIRST ASCENT

The party had spent another day or two beside the lake when, one
drowsy afternoon, Kinnaird, who sat on the hot, white shingle by the
water's edge, with a pair of glasses in his hand, sent for Weston.
Miss Kinnaird and Ida Stirling were seated among the boulders not far
away.

"I understand that the river bends around the range, and the crest of
the first rise seems no great height," he said. "There is evidently--a
bench I think you call it--before you come to the snow, and the ascent
should be practicable for a lady. Take these glasses and look at it."

Weston, who took the glasses, swept them along the hillside across the
lake. It rose very steeply from the water's edge, but the slope was
uniform, and as a good deal of it consisted apparently of
lightly-covered rock and gravel the pines were thinner, and there was
less undergrowth than usual. Far above him the smooth ascent broke off
abruptly, and, though he could not see beyond the edge, there
certainly appeared to be a plateau between it and the farther wall of
rock and snow.

"I think one could get up so far without very