near the
creek. Evidently the town had been built along logging roads, and there
was something grateful and admirable in its irregular arrangement. The
houses, moreover, were all modifications of the logging camps; even the
drug store stood with its side to the street. All about were stumps and
fringes of pines, which the lumbermen, for some good reason, had passed
by. Charred boles stood purple-black out of the snow.

It was all green and gray and blue and yellow-white and wild. The sky
was not more illimitable than the rugged forest which extended on every
hand.

"Oh, this is glorious--glorious!" said the wife. "Do I own some of this
town?" she asked, as they rose to go out.

"I reckon you do."

"Oh, I'm so glad!"

As they stepped out on the platform, a large man in corduroy and
wolf-skin faced them like a bandit.

"Hello, Ed!"

"Hello, Jack! Well, we've found you. My wife, Mr. Ridgeley. We've come
up to find out how much you've embezzled," he said, as Ridgeley pulled
off an immense glove to shake hands all round.

"Well, come right over to the hotel. It ain't the Auditorium, but then,
again, it ain't like sleeping outdoors."

As they moved along they heard the train go off, and then the sound of
the saw resumed its domination of the village noises.

"Was the town named after you, or you after the town?" asked Field.

"Named after me. Old man didn't want it named after him; would kill it,"
he said.

Mr. and Mrs. Field found the hotel quite comfortable and the dinner
wholesome. They beamed upon each other.

"It's going to be delightful," they said.

Ridgeley was a bachelor, and found his home at the hotel also. That
night he said: "Now we'll go over the papers and records of your uncle's
property, and then we'll go out and see if the property is all there. I
imagine this is to be a searching investigation."

"You may well think it. My wife is inexorable."

As night fell, the wife did not feel so safe and well pleased. The loud
talking in the office below and the occasional whooping of a crowd of
mill hands going by made her draw her chair nearer and lay her fingers
in her husband's palm.

He smiled indulgently. "Don't be frightened, my dear. These men are not
half so bad as they sound."

II.

Mrs. Field sat in the inner room of Ridgeley's office, waiting for the
return of her husband with the team. They were going out for a drive.

Ridgeley was working at his books, and he had forgotten he