of saints in their
camps and vastly more to the communion of sinners. It is a foreman's
particular business to spot the lawyers early in the game and to deal
with them as the occasion warrants.

There are many things to be observed down in these black entrails of
the earth, but, before we leave, we will look at the stables. They are
lighted by electricity. It is the work of the horses to haul the cars
to the main entry where they are switched on to the electric cable. It
is commonly believed that horses who live in mines become blind. This
is not true. What they lose is their sense of colour, for in the dark
all things are hueless. These horses are fat-fleshed and healthy, and
are so tame they can almost be mesmerized into talking to you. They
seem highly interested in the story I tell them of how once the
Frenchmen put twelve thousand dead men and their horses down three
coal-pits at Jemappes, and things like that. They appreciate carrots,
sugar-lumps and apples, which have been steadily purloined from the
cook's pantry at the bunk-house, in a way that is positively human. It
would be unkind to enter the mine without carrying a treat for the
horses, but now, having done so, let me bid all of you on the day-shift
a very good fortune, and a safe return to God's blessed sunshine.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE PLAYGROUNDS OF THE WEST

Come, my love, and let us wander
Cross the hills and over yonder.--CY WARMAN.

Banff, in the Rocky Mountains, has been so often called the playgrounds
of the West, that the words have become trite and fail to carry their
true significance. This fact is inevitably borne in on the Canadian
who visits the place, and he wonders to himself why he has failed to
understand it before.

Assuredly this is my experience as I ride around Tunnel Mountain this
beautiful August day. The road is seven miles long, and from its
winding ascent, one may look across the hills and down the wide valley
where the green waters of the Bow River foam into white over the rocks.
This is the full-robed, full-voiced choir of the mountain temple, but I
do not know what it sings.

The Valley of the Bow River with its amphitheatre of hills is the
wonder picture of the Rockies, combining, as it does, all that is most
beautiful in are and nature. [Transcriber's note: because of the
oddness of the grammar of this sentence, it may be that one or more
words are missing.]

Across it, on Tunnel Mountain, is