t,
and the means by which he had accomplished it. Encouraged by her
intelligent interest he talked with eager enthusiasm of his plans for
working it, describing mercury traps, and undercurrents, discussing the
comparative merits of pole and block, Hungarian and caribou rifles. Once
he was well started it seemed to him that he must have been saving up
things all his life to tell to this girl. He talked almost breathlessly
as though he had much to say and an appallingly short time to say it in.

He told her about his friend, Old Felix, and about the "sassy" blue-jays
and the darting kingfisher that nested in the cut-bank where he worked,
of the bush-birds that shared his sour-dough bread. He tried to picture
to her the black bear lumbering over the river bowlders to the service
berry bush across the river, where he stood on his hind legs, cramming
his mouth and watching over his shoulder, looking like a funny little
man in baggy trousers. He told her of his hero, the great Agassiz, of
his mother, of whom even yet he could not speak without a break in his
voice, and of his father, as he remembered him, harsh, silent,
interested only in his cattle.

It dawned upon Bruce suddenly that he had been talking about
himself--babbling for nearly an hour.

"Why haven't you stopped me?" he demanded, pausing in the middle of a
sentence and coloring to his hair. "I've been prattling like an old
soldier, telling war stories in a Home. What's got into me?"

Helen laughed aloud at his dismay.

"Honest," he assured her ruefully, "I never broke out like this before.
And the worst of it is that I know with the least encouragement from you
I'll start again. I never wanted to talk so much in my life. I'm
ransacking my brain this very minute to see if there's anything else I
know that I haven't told you. Oh, yes, there is," he exclaimed putting
his hand inside his coat, "there's some more money coming to you from
Slim--I forgot to tell you. It isn't a great deal but--" he laid in her
hand the bank-notes Sprudell had been obliged to give him in
Bartlesville after having denied finding her.

Helen looked from the money to Bruce in surprised inquiry:

"But Mr. Sprudell has already given me what Freddie left."

"Oh, this is another matter--a collection I made for him after Sprudell
left," he replied glibly. It was considerable satisfaction to think that
Sprudell had had to pay for his perfidy and she would benefit by it.

The last thing t