is ear. "G'lang there," he cried shaking the reins. "I
reached my gun before he reached me," he said; "and I gave him the
charge, bang in his little red eye. He reared up; and come down kerplunk
right on top o' me; only I rolled away just in time!"

* * * * *

The trail to the Landing is considered something of a road up North; and
the natives are apt to stare pityingly at the effeminate stranger who
complains of the holes. It is something of a road compared to what comes
after; but Natalie, hitherto accustomed to cushions and springs in her
drives, could not conceive of anything worse. As the afternoon waned,
what with the heat, the hard, narrow seat, and the incessant lurching
and bumping of the crazy stage, which threw her now backward till her
head threatened to snap off, and now forward on Nell's knees, the
blooming roses in Natalie's cheeks faded, and her smile grew wan.
Poor Garth, anxiously watching her, almost burst with suppressed
solicitousness.

But at last the journey came to its end; and at six o'clock the Royal
Mail with its bruised and famished passengers swung into the yard at
Forbie's, the halfway house, fifty miles from Prince George. Garth had
learned that the men slept in an outside bunkhouse, while the women were
received into the farmhouse itself. He hastened to interview Mrs. Forbie
in private, that the dreadful possibility of Natalie's being asked to
share a room with the other woman passenger might be avoided. It is
doubtful if Natalie would have taken any harm from poor old Nell; but
Garth was a young man falling in love; and so, ferociously virtuous in
judging Nell's kind. Natalie had a room to herself.

IV

THE STOPPING-HOUSE YARD

Next morning, Old Paul, assisted by Nell's dark companion, and the
half-breed Xavier, was hitching up in the yard of Forbie's, when Nick
Grylls appeared from the house, and walked heavily up and down at some
distance moodily chewing a cigar. Big Nick was wondering dully what
in hell was the matter with him. He had tossed in his bunk the night
through; and now, at the beginning of the day, when a man should be at
his heartiest, he found himself without appetite for his breakfast, and
in a grinding temper, without any object to vent it on. In his little
eyes, bloodshot with the lack of sleep, and unwonted emotion, there was
an almost childish expression of bewilderment.

A deep sense of personal injury lay at the root o