catching up a coal for his pipe. "By by,
Cameron. Au revoir. I go for tak some more slice from my porsch."

"Good-bye, Benny," cried Cameron. "It is your last chance, for to-morrow
I give you back your job. I don't want any 'front porsch' on me."

"Ho! ho!" laughed Benny scornfully, as he turned to hurry after
his chief. "Dat's not moch front porsch on you. Dat's one rail
fence--clabbord."

And indeed Benoit was right, for there was no "porsch" or sign of one on
Cameron's lean and muscular frame. The daily battle with winter's fierce
frosts and blizzards, the strenuous toil, the hard food had done their
work on him. Strong, firm-knit, clean and sound, hard and fit, he had
come through his first Canadian winter. No man in the camp, not even
the chief himself, could "bush" him in a day's work. He had gained
enormously in strength lately, and though the lines of his frame still
ran to angles, he had gained in weight as well. Never in the days of his
finest training was he as fit to get the best out of himself as now.
An injured foot had held him in camp for a week, but the injury was now
almost completely repaired and the week's change of work only served to
replenish his store of snap and vim.

An hour or two sufficed to put the camp in the perfect order that he
knew Benoit would consider ideal and to get all in readiness for the
evening meal when the gang should return. He had the day before him
and what a day it was! Cameron lay upon a buffalo skin in front of the
cook-tent, content with all the world and for the moment with himself.
Six months ago he had engaged as an axeman in the surveyors' gang at
$30 per month and "found," being regarded more in the light of a
supernumerary and more or less of a burden than anything else. Now
he was drawing double the wage as rodman, and, of all the gang, stood
second to none in McIvor's regard. In this new venture he had come
nearer to making good than ever before in his life. So in full content
with himself he allowed his eyes to roam over the brown grassy plain
that sloped to the Bow in front, and over the Bow to the successive
lines of hills, rounded except where the black rocks broke jagged
through the turf, and upward over the rounded hills to the grey sides of
the mighty masses of the mountains, and still upward to where the white
peaks lost themselves in the shining blue of the sky. Behind him a
coulee ran back between hills to a line of timber, and beyond the timber
m