her is very clever and has
a beautiful face. He need not have told me this. It is true of every
man's mother "back home."

Burney was among the first men who scouted for the railway to the West
and helped run the try-lines. Falling into the pose of the
raconteur--one very natural to the northman--he tells me tragic things,
and some that are both tragic and humorous.

One of these was about a Mounted Policeman who was sent out from his
post to bring in a murderer. It was terribly cold weather, the mercury
almost falling out of the tube. Now, the wanted murderer is the
wariest game in the world, and to take him in those mountains one needs
boldness and caution in the right proportions--that is to say
ninety-nine per cent. of the former, and one per cent. of the latter.
The policeman who was sent out was only a stripling, but there was no
yellow in him save the streak on his trouser-legs. The round journey
was one hundred and twenty miles, but, alone and unaided, he brought in
his man, not even waiting to sleep. Almost immediately on a fresh
mount, he again started out from the post, but this time to bring in
the corpse. The second hundred and twenty miles were terribly long and
arduous ones, and the cold cut like a blade. By shutting your eyes you
can see and feel this thing: the two frost-covered horses plodding
through the bleak and sterile mountains that are grim as eternity--no
sound save the cry of starveling wolves, or the white whine of the
sleepless wind, these and the sharp-drawn breath of the men. No! we
must be mistaken. Only one man breathes, the other seems strangely
still, and his lips are tight shut. There is something peculiarly
defective in his stony eyes and stony face. If you look closer you can
see he is roped close to the horse, and that he doesn't give to the
lope.... God of men and beasts! that is a dead man that rides through
the snow, and he rides to confront his slayer.... And when the two
reached the police post, the live dare-doing man was found to be
terribly exhausted from hunger, lack of sleep, and the long, long ride,
so that his brittle nerves were like to snap in two. This was how they
came to give him the stimulants which in some way (it is not for a
tattling civilian to say the way) had not entirely worn off when he was
summoned to give evidence at the inquest.

The auditory consisted of engineers, and chainmen from the residencies
who resented this grim sitting with