ld Cambridge friend of his. The night was cold, and
he was evidently tired by the long journey from Winnipeg. Elizabeth was
in despair, but could not move him at all. Then Anderson had intervened;
had found somehow and somewhere a trapper just in from the mountains
with a wonderful "catch" of fox and marten; and in the amusement of
turning over a bundle of magnificent furs, and of buying something
straight from the hunter for his mother, the youth had forgotten his
waywardness. Behind his back, Elizabeth had warmly thanked her
lieutenant.

"He only wanted a little distraction," Anderson had said, with a shy
smile, as though he both liked and disliked her thanks. And then,
impulsively, she had told him a good deal about Philip and his illness,
and their mother, and the old house in Cumberland. She, of all persons,
to be so communicative about the family affairs to a stranger! Was it
that two days in a private car in Canada went as far as a month's
acquaintance elsewhere?

Another passenger had been introduced to Lady Merton by Anderson, an
hour before the departure of the car, and had made such a pleasant
impression on her that he also had been asked to join the party, and had
very gladly consented. This was the American, Mr. Val Morton, now the
official receiver, so Elizabeth understood, of a great railway system in
the middle west of the United States. The railway had been handed over
to him in a bankrupt condition. His energy and probity were engaged in
pulling it through. More connections between it and the Albertan
railways were required; and he was in Canada looking round and
negotiating. He was already known to the Chief Justice and Mariette, and
Elizabeth fell quickly in love with his white hair, his black eyes, his
rapier-like slenderness and keenness, and that pleasant mingling in
him--so common in the men of his race--of the dry shrewdness of the
financier with a kind of headlong courtesy to women.

On sped the car through the gate of the Rockies. The mountains grew
deeper, the snows deeper against the blue, the air more dazzling, the
forests closer, breathing balm into the sunshine.

Suddenly the car slackened and stopped. No sign of a station. Only a
rustic archway, on which was written "The Great Divide," and beneath the
archway two small brooklets issuing, one flowing to the right, the other
to the left.

They all left the car and stood round the tiny streams. They were on the
watershed. The water in