. Her hair was flying
from its moorings; her face flamed; and her hat sat at a disreputably
rakish angle. As she piled up her encumbrances on the chair next to the
girl, and took off her coat, she bubbled over with indistinguishable,
anxious mutterings. At last she sank into the seat by Garth with
something between a sigh and a moan.

"I've lost my husband," she announced at large.

Her distress was so comical they could not forbear smiling.

Encouraged by this earnest of sympathy, the newcomer plunged into a
breathless recital of her mischances.

"Just came in over the A. N. R.," she panted. "By rights we should have
arrived last night, but day-before-yesterday's train had the right of
way and we was held up down to Battle Run. I tell you, the rails of that
line are like the waves of the sea! I was that sea-sick I thought never
to eat mortal food again--but it's coming back; my appetite I mean. He
was to meet me, but I suppose he got tired after seventeen hours, small
blame--and dropped off somewheres. S'pose I'll have to make a round of
the hotels till I find him. You don't happen to know him, do you?" she
asked Garth. "John Pink, the carpenter?"

"I'm a stranger in Prince George," said he politely.

"Oh, what and all I've been through!" groaned Mrs. Pink, with an access
of energetic distress. She shook a warning finger at the girl. "Take my
advice, Miss," she warned, "and don't you let him out of your sight a
minute, till you get him safe home!"

The girl looked hard at her plate; while for Garth, a slow, dark red
crept up from his neck to the roots of his hair. Yet Mrs. Pink's mistake
was surely a natural one; there they sat lunching privately together in
the secluded little cabin. Moreover, they looked like fit mates, each for
the other; and their air of studied indifference was no more than the air
commonly assumed by young married couples in public places--especially
the lately married. Without appearing to raise her eyes, the girl in some
mysterious way, was conscious of Garth's dark flush. "Serve him right,"
she thought with wicked satisfaction. "I shan't help him out." But
Garth's blush was for her more than for himself.

Mrs. Pink, absorbed in her own troubles, was innocently unaware of
the consternation she had thrown them into. She plunged ahead; still
addressing her remarks to the girl.

"Perhaps you think there's no danger of losing yours so soon," she went
on; "and very like you're right. But,