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of the recent laughter of his companions at his eagerness.

"Well, that's hard to say," replied his elder relative. "I'd like to start to-morrow morning. It all depends on the stage of the water. If a flood came down the Athabasca to-morrow you'd see pretty much every breed in that saloon over there stop drinking and hurry to the scows."

"What's that got to do with it?" asked John.

"Well, when the river goes up the scows can run the Grand Rapids, down below here, without unloading, or at least without unloading everything. If the river is low so that the rocks stand out, the men have to portage every pound of the brigade stuff. The Grand Rapids are bad, let me tell you that! It is only within the last fifty years that any one has ever tried to run them. I'll show you the man who first went through--an old man now over seventy; but he was a young chap when he first tried it. Well, he found that he could get through, so he tried it over again. He and others have been guiding on thos

you up?" asked Lady Elspeth."He is very good company, I am told."

"Oh, Charles is excellent company. If we didn't see him now and againthe house would be like a tomb. But he's not there all the time, andwe have relapses. He has his own rooms elsewhere, you know. And I'mreally not surprised. It taxes even him to lighten the deadly dulnessof Melgrave Square."

"It must be a great comfort to Mrs. Pixley to have you with her, mydear."

"I can't make up for all she lacks in other directions," saidMargaret, with a shake of the head. "I get quite angry with UncleJeremiah sometimes. He is so--so absorbed in benefiting other peoplethat he--Well, you can understand how delightful it is to be able torun in here and find the sun always shining."

"Thank you, my dear," said Lady Elspeth, with a twinkle in the browneyes. "Some people carry their own sunshine with them wherever theygo."

"And some people decidedly don't," said Margaret, who was evidentlysuffering from some unusual exhibition of Pixle

ocean. However, some footsteps were heard, and Abbe Rose, againmistrustful, saw a man go by, a tall and sturdy man, who wore clogs andwas bareheaded, showing his thick and closely-cut white hair. "Is notthat your brother?" asked the old priest.

Pierre had not stirred. "Yes, it is my brother Guillaume," he quietlyresponded. "I have found him again since I have been coming occasionallyto the Sacred Heart. He owns a house close by, where he has been livingfor more than twenty years, I think. When we meet we shake hands, but Ihave never even been to his house. Oh! all is quite dead between us, wehave nothing more in common, we are parted by worlds."

Abbe Rose's tender smile again appeared, and he waved his hand as if tosay that one must never despair of love. Guillaume Froment, a savant oflofty intelligence, a chemist who lived apart from others, like one whorebelled against the social system, was now a parishioner of the abbe's,and when the latter passed the house where Guillaume lived with his

sioner at Mammoth Hot Springs.

[Illustration: "So Maw, dear, old, happy, innocent Maw, knelt down with her hatpin and wrote:"--p. 19]

You see, the geysers rattled Maw, there being so many and she loving them all so much. One day when they were camped near the Upper Basin, Maw was looking down in the cone of Old Faithful, just after that Paderewski of the park had ceased playing. She told me she wanted to see where all the suds came from. But all at once she saw beneath her feet a white, shiny expanse of something that looked like chalk. At a sudden impulse she drew a hatpin from her hair and knelt down on the geyser cone--not reflecting how long and slow had been its growth.

For the first time a feeling of identity came to Maw. She never had been anybody all her life, even to herself, before this moment on her vacation. But now she had seen the mountains and the sky, and had oriented herself as one of the owners of this park. So Maw, dear, old, happy, innocent Maw, knelt down with her hat

out of their folded sweaters. Soon they were helping Moise with his cooking at the fire and enjoying as usual their evening conversation with that cheerful friend.

It did not take Moise, old-timer as he was, very long to get his bannocks and tea ready, and to fry the whitefish and grouse which the boys now brought to him.

Uncle Dick looked at his watch after a time. "Forty minutes," said he.

"For what?" demanded Jesse.

"Well, it took us forty minutes to get off the packs and hobble the horses and get supper ready. That's too long--we ought to have it all done and supper over in that time. We'll have to do better than this when we get fully on the trail."

"What's the use in being in such a hurry?" demanded John, who was watching the frying-pan very closely.

"It's always a good thing to get the camp work done quickly mornings and evenings," replied the leader of the party. "We've got a long trip ahead, and I'd like to average twenty-five miles a day for a while, if I co

next, and if further pursued by legal process there, to step into a third.

A highwayman, at the beginning of the century in which we live, who honoured Kinver with residing in it, planted his habitation at the extreme verge of the county, divided from the next by a hollow way, and when the officers came to take him, he leaped the dyke, and mocked them with impunity from the farther side.

But this was not all. The geological structure of the country favoured them. Wherever a cliff, great or small, presented its escarpment, there the soft sandstone was scooped out into labyrinths of chambers, in which families dwelt, who in not a few instances were in league with the land pirates. The plunder could anywhere be safely and easily concealed, and the plunderers could pass through subterranean passages out of one county into another, and so elude pursuit.

The highwaymen belonged by no means to the lowest class. The gentlemen of the road comprised, for the most part, wastrels and gamesters of go

ey have eaten the small body by now, and enjoyed it. Always worms enjoy a body to eat.

And also the Devil rejoiced.

And I rejoiced with the Devil.

They are more pitiable, I insist, than I and my sand and barrenness--the mother whose life is involved in divorces and fights, and the worms eating at the child's body, and the wooden headstone which will presently decay.

And so the Devil and I rejoice.

But no matter how ferociously pitiable is the dried-up graveyard, the sand and barrenness and the sluggish little stream have their own persistent individual damnation. The world is at least so constructed that its treasures may be damned each in a different manner and degree.

I feel about forty years old.

And I know my feeling is not the feeling of forty years. They do not feel any of these things at forty. At forty the fire has long since burned out. When I am forty I shall look back to myself and my feelings at nineteen--and I shall smile.

Or shall I indeed

s unprotected surface to her shaft.

Towards religion her attitude was the well-bred one. She took off her hat to it, as a gentleman removes his hat in church whatever his creed may be. Her own beliefs were as daring and as nearly as possible uninfluenced by outward opinion or by the accepted systems as it is possible for a creed to be. She never tried to force them upon any one else; possibly she did not believe in them herself sufficiently to wish to do so; but like her queer gowns and her dyed red hair her creed suited Mrs. Ogilvie. There was a congruous incongruity about her which set many people puzzling to find out her real character. Pompous persons and snobs detested her. Stupid or vapid people saw nothing in her, or saw merely that she dyed her hair and was dressed by Paquin. Narrow-minded people disapproved of her, and clever people considered her one of the most striking, if not one of the most agreeable personalities of the day. Women hardly ever understood her; but they respected any one wh