form was sturdy too. There was a lithe
strength about him that suggested the larger felines; the hard trails
of the forest had left not a spare ounce of flesh on his powerful
frame. His mold, except for a vague and indistinct refinement
in his long-fingered and strong hands, was simply that of a
woodsman,--sturdy, muscular, untiring. His speech was not greatly
different from that of others: the woodspeople, spending many of the
long winter days in reading, are usually careless in speech but rarely
ungrammatical. His clothes were homely and worn. He wore a blue
mackinaw over a flannel shirt, dark trousers and rubber boots: garments
that were suited to his life.

But it was true that men looked twice into Bill Bronson's face. His
features were rugged, now his mouth and jowls were dark with beard, yet
written all over his sunburned face was a kindliness and gentleness that
could not be denied. There was strength and good humor in plenty; and
it was hard to reconcile these qualities with an unquestioned
wistfulness and boyishness in his eyes. They were dark eyes, the eyes
of a man of action who could also dream, kindly, thoughtful eyes which
even the deep shadows of the forest had not blinded to beauty.

As he waited for his meal he crossed the dark road to the little
frontier post office, there to be given his two months' accumulation of
letters. He looked them over with significant anxiety. There were the
usual forders from fur buyers, a few advertisements and circulars, and a
small batch of business mail. The smile died from his eyes as he read
one of these communications after another. Their context was usually
the same,--that his proposition did not look good, and no investment
would be made in a plan as vague as his. The correspondents understood
that he had been grubstaked before without result. They remained,
however, his respectfully,--and Bill's great hand crumpled each in
turn.

Only one letter remained, written in an unknown hand from a far-off
city; and it dropped, for the moment, unnoticed into his lap. His eyes
were brooding and lifeless as he stared out the hotel window into the
darkened street. There was no use of appealing again to the business
folk of the provincial towns; the tone of their letters was all too
decisive. The great plans he had made would come to nothing after all.
His proposition simply did not hold water.

He had been seeking a "grubstake,"--some one to finance anoth