n loggers at any turn of the
road. And that was a long way for a man like Thompson to come in the
course of twelve months. If he could have been as sure of a sound,
working philosophy of life as he was of the fitness of his muscles he
would have been well satisfied. Sometimes it was a puzzle to him why men
existed, why the will to live was such a profound force, when living was
a struggle, a vexation, an aimless eating and sleeping and working like
a carthorse. Where was there any plan, any universal purpose at all?

Having never learned dissipation as a form of amusement, nor having yet
been driven to it by the sheer deadliness of incessant, monotonous
labor, Thompson was able to save his money. When he went to Wrangel once
a month he got a bath, a hair-cut, and some magazines to read, perhaps
an article or two of necessary clothing. That was all his financial
outlay. He came back as clear-eyed as when he left, with the bulk of his
wages in his pocket, where some of his fellows returned with empty
pockets and aching heads.

Wherefore, when the winter snows at last closed down the pile camp
Thompson had accumulated four hundred dollars. Also he had made an
impression on the contractor by his steadiness, to such an extent that
the man offered him a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month to come
back and take charge of a similar camp in the spring. But Thompson, like
Tommy Ashe, had grown troubled with the wandering foot. The money in
hand gave him security against want in strange places. He would not
promise to be on hand in the spring. Like Tommy, he had a notion to try
town, to see for himself what opportunity town afforded. And he pitched
on Vancouver, not alone because Tommy Ashe was there, but because it was
the biggest port on Canada's western coast. He had heard once from
Tommy. He was a motor-car salesman now, and he was doing well. But
Tommy's letter was neither long nor graphic in its descriptions. It left
a good deal of Vancouver to Thompson's imagination. However, like the
bear that went over the mountain, Thompson thought he would go and see
what he could see.

Wrangel lies well within the Inside Passage, that great waterway which
is formed between the mainland and a chain of islands that sweeps from
Cape Flattery in the south to the landward end of the Aleutians. All the
steamers that ply between Puget Sound and Skagway take that route.
Seldom do the vessels plying between southern ports and the far beac