grace and breeding that went clear to her finger tips, he had some
measure of understanding of an ardor and an intensity that might have
been native to his own wilderness. Not often has girlhood love stood
such a test as this,--six years of silence. He could not doubt its
reality; no small or half-felt emotion could have propelled her forth
into these desolate wastes. Her love had gone deep and it lived.

He answered very gravely and humbly, perhaps a even a little sadly:
"I'll do everything I can to find him for you, Miss. I'll get your
sweetheart for you if it can be done."

To Vosper and Lounsbury the two little sentences were just the
assurances of a hired employee, half-felt and forgotten soon. But
Virginia heard more clearly. She had a vague feeling that she was a
witness to a vow. It seemed to her that there was the fire of a zealot
in his dark eyes, and by token of some mystery she did not understand,
this strong man had seen fit to give her his oath. She only knew that
he spoke true, that by a secret law that only strong men know he would
be as faithful to this promise as if he had given bond.

IV

It was one of the decrees of the forest gods that no human being shall
ride for five miles through the spruce forests of the Selkirks and fail
to glean at least some slight degree of wilderness knowledge. Both
Virginia and Lounsbury had been on horseback before. Virginia had
ridden in the parks of her native city: long ago and far away a
barefoot, ragged boy--much to be preferred to the smug and petulant
man who now tried to hard to forget those humble days--had bestrode an
old plow horse nightly on the way to a watering trough. But this riding
had qualities all its own. There was no open road winding before them.
Nor was there any trail,--in general or particular.

It was true that the moose had passed that way, leaving their great
footprints in the dying grass. They had chosen the easiest pathway over
the hills, and Bill was enough of a woodsman to follow where they led.
Traversing the Clearwater was simply a matter of knowing the country and
going in a general direction. Almost at once the evergreen thickets
closed around them.

Virginia found that safety depended upon constant watchfulness. The
evergreen branches struck cruel blows at her face, the spruce needles
cut like knives. Sometimes the horse in front would bend down a young
tree, permitting it to whip back with a deadly blow; she