at the edge of
the clearing on a pile of balsam that he had gathered for her she began
to talk of leaving. They would be wondering back there on the paper
what had become of her and there was work to be done.

He could not take his eye off the diamond ring on her finger as she
spoke. "They" she had said; but it was probably "he" that she thought,
and he chucked a stone clean down to the water-tank, surprised that he
could throw that far. The injured ankle was no longer an excuse for
delaying their departure. So they planned to leave next day, boarding
a chance freight and riding down the line to some station where they
could catch the Toronto Express.

Several trains passed every day each way. Even as they sat there they
heard the familiar rumble somewhere far off among the low hills
westward. They listened to the growing noise of its approach.
Presently the smoke of the engine became visible and around the curve,
far up the track, the train trailed into view, a freight, the cars
swinging into line and hiding behind the black front of the locomotive.
The engineer was bowling her down towards them full "lickety-belt" with
no intention of stopping to take on water--a through freight apparently.

With a deafening roar she swept in, the engineer jogging laxly on his
cushions. Kendrick stood up and hollered at him. The salutation was
acknowledged with a friendly wave of the hand. The long string of
brown and yellow cars followed rattle-de-bang over the switch and
rocked away eastward. The roar dropped off abruptly into diminuendo,
punctuated by the rattle of a loose truck at the rear of the caboose.

From the cupola a brakeman with a dirty blue bandana knotted about his
brown throat, waved to them and shouted something which they could not
hear. He held aloft a white stick from which he had peeled the green
bark, pointed to it, then cast it back towards them and pointed to it
significantly.

"There's a paper of some kind fastened to it," said Phil as he
signalled that he understood.

They gazed after the end of the caboose until the fluttering green
flags faded out in the swirl of dust that pursued into the distance.
Then Kendrick scrambled down to find the message. It was in a sealed
envelope, bound around the stick with twine. One glance at the yellow
telegram inside sent him back up the embankment towards the girl as
fast as he could climb.

"Of all things, Miss Lawson!" he called out. "It's a wire f