wlessness was quite in keeping with the men and the
environment. There was no policeman on the corner, no mechanism of law
and order visible anywhere. The characteristic attitude of these
woodsmen was of intolerance for restraint, of complete self-sufficiency.
It had colored her brother's point of view. She perceived that whereas
all her instinct was to know the rules of the game and abide by them,
he, taking his cue from his environment, inclined to break rules that
proved inconvenient, even to formulate new ones to apply.

"And suppose," said she, "that a game warden should catch you or Mr.
Jack Fyfe killing deer out of season?"

"We'd be hauled up and fined a hundred dollars or so," he told her. "But
they don't catch us."

He shrugged his shoulders, and smiling tolerantly upon her, proceeded to
smoke.

Dusk was falling now, the long twilight of the northern seasons
gradually deepening, as they sat in silence. Along the creek bank arose
the evening chorus of the frogs. The air, now hushed and still, was
riven every few minutes by the whir of wings as ducks in evening flight
swept by above. All the boisterous laughter and talk in the bunkhouse
had died. The woods ranged gloomy and impenetrable, save only in the
northwest, where a patch of sky lighted by diffused pink and gray
revealed one mountain higher than its fellows standing bald against the
horizon.

"Well, I guess it's time to turn in." Benton muffled a yawn. "Pleasant
dreams, Sis. Oh, here's your purse. I used part of the bank roll. You
won't have much use for money up here, anyway."

He flipped the purse across to her and sauntered into his bedroom.
Stella sat gazing thoughtfully at the vast bulk of Mount Douglas a few
minutes longer. Then she too went into the box-like room, the bare
discomfort of which chilled her merely to behold.

With a curious uncertainty, a feeling of reluctance for the proceeding
almost, she examined the contents of her purse. For a little time she
stood gazing into it, a queer curl to her full red lips. Then she flung
it contemptuously on the bed and began to take down her hair.

"'A rich, rough, tough country, where it doesn't do to be finicky about
anything,'" she murmured, quoting a line from one of Charlie Benton's
letters. "It would appear to be rather unpleasantly true. Particularly
the last clause."

In her purse, which had contained one hundred and ten dollars, there now
reposed in solitary state a twenty-dollar bil