ing high and afar, and with infinite serenity knowing at
last the true balance of all things one with another, gave him his full
forgiveness.

The girl began to strip the wet clothes from his injured body.

XXXVI

The trail was long and steep into Back There for Jeffery Neilson and his
men. Day after day they traveled with their train of pack horses,
pushing deeper into the wilds, fording mighty rivers, traversing silent
and majestic mountain ranges, climbing slopes so steep that the packs
had to be lightened to half before the gasping animals could reach the
crest. They could go only at a snail's pace,--even in the best day's
travel only ten miles, and often a single mile was a hard, exhausting
day's work.

Of course there was no kind of a trail for them to follow. As far as
possible they followed the winding pathways of big game--as long as
these led them in their general direction--but often they were obliged
to cut their way through the underbrush. Time after time they
encountered impassable cliffs or rivers from which they were obliged to
turn back and seek new routes; they found marshes that they could not
penetrate; ranges they could not climb; wastes of slide rock where they
could make headway only at a creeping pace and with hourly risk of their
lives.

They had counted on slow travel, but the weeks grew into the months
before they even neared the obscure heart of Back There where they
thought Ben and Beatrice might be hidden. The way was hard as they had
never dreamed. Every day, it seemed to them, brought its fresh tragedy:
a long back-trailing to avoid some impassable place, a fatiguing
digression, perhaps several hours of grinding work with the axe in order
to cut a trail. Sometimes the harness broke, requiring long stops on
the trail to repair it, the packs slipped continually from the hard
going; and they found it increasingly difficult to secure horse feed for
the animals.

Even Indian ponies cannot keep fat on such grass as grows in the deep
shade of the spruce. They need the rich growths of the open park lands
to stiffen them for the grinding toil; and even with good feeding,
foresters know that pack animals must not be kept on the trail for too
many days in succession. Jeffery Neilson and his men disregarded both
these facts, with the result that the animals lost flesh and strength,
cutting down the speed of their advance. Oaths and shouts were
unavailing now: only cruel blows could driv