nce,
the story-teller Yagorsha, even Ol' Chief--no one will be indoors
to-day.

Sitting there together, they saw the last stand made by the ice, and
shared that moment when the final barrier, somewhere far below, gave
way with boom and thunder. The mighty flood ran free, tearing up trees
by their roots as it ran, detaching masses of rock, dissolving islands
into swirling sand and drift, carving new channels, making and unmaking
the land. The water began to fall. It had been a great time: it was
ended.

"Pardner," says the Colonel, "we've seen the ice go out."

"No fella can call you and me cheechalkos after to-day."

"No, sah. We've travelled the Long Trail, we've seen the ice go out,
and we're friends yet."

The Kentuckian took his pardner's brown hand with a gentle solemnity,
seemed about to say something, but stopped, and turned his bronzed face
to the flood, carried back upon some sudden tide within himself to
those black days on the trail, that he wanted most in the world to
forget. But in his heart he knew that all dear things, all things kind
and precious--his home, a woman's face--all, all would fade before he
forgot those last days on the trail. The record of that journey was
burnt into the brain of the men who had made it. On that stretch of the
Long Trail the elder had grown old, and the younger had forever lost
his youth. Not only had the roundness gone out of his face, not only
was it scarred, but such lines were graven there as commonly takes the
antique pencil half a score of years to trace.

"Something has happened," the Colonel said quite low. "We aren't the
same men who left the Big Chimney."

"Right!" said the Boy, with a laugh, unwilling as yet to accept his own
personal revelation, preferring to put a superficial interpretation on
his companion's words. He glanced at the Colonel, and his face changed
a little. But still he would not understand. Looking down at the
chaparejos that he had been so proud of, sadly abbreviated to make
boots for Nig, jagged here and there, and with fringes now not all
intentional, it suited him to pretend that the "shaps" had suffered
most.

"Yes, the ice takes the kinks out."

"Whether the thing that's happened is good or evil, I don't pretend to
say," the other went on gravely, staring at the river. "I only know
something's happened. There were possibilities--in me, anyhow--that
have been frozen to death. Yes, we're different."

The Boy roused himself, but