idered to be a rather difficult pass. To their great astonishment
the brown-faced stranger, who wore ordinary tight-fitting American
attire and rather pointed American shoes, went up it apparently without
an effort, and for the credit of the clubs they belonged to, it seemed
incumbent on them to keep pace with him. They naturally did not know
that he had carried bags of flour and mining tools over very much
higher passes close up to the limit of eternal snow, but after two
days' climbing they were, on the whole, relieved to part company with
him.

A professional guide who overtook them, however, recognised the
capabilities of the man when he noticed the way he lifted his feet and
how he set them down. This, he decided, was one accustomed to walking
among the heather, but he was wrong; for it was the trick the bushman
learns when he plods through leagues of undergrowth and fallen
branches, or the tall grass of the swamps; and it is a memorable
experience to make a day's journey with such a man. For the first hour
the thing seems easy, for the pace is never forced, but it also never
slackens down; and as the hours go by the novice, who flounders and
stumbles, grows horribly weary of trying to keep up with that steady,
persistent swing.

Wyllard had travelled since morning along a ridge of fells when he sat
down beside the water and contentedly filled his pipe. On the one
hand, a wall of crags high above was growing black against the evening
light, and the stream came boiling down clear as crystal among great
boulder stones; but he had wandered through many a grander and more
savage scene of rocky desolation, and it impressed him less than the
green valley in front of him. He had, at least, never seen anything
like that either on the Pacific slope or in Western Canada.

Early as it was in the season, the meadows between rock and water were
green as emerald, and the hedge-rows, just flushed with verdure, were
clipped and trimmed as though their owner loved them. There was not a
dead tree in the larch copse which dipped to the stream, and all its
feathery tassels were sprinkled with tiny flecks of crimson and
wondrous green. Great oaks dotted the meadows, each one perfect in
symmetry. It seemed that the men who held this land cared for single
trees. The sleek, tame cattle that rubbed their necks on the level
hedge-top and gazed at him ruminatively were very different from the
wild, long-horned creatures whose fu