nd then it makes me nervous," the guide went
on, in a matter-of-fact tone. "I don't care what you do when you get
back to town. I just don't want you pestering me any more with your
complaints. I've stood a lot for Miss Tremont's sake--she probably
wouldn't like to see anything happen to you. But just a few more little
remarks like you made before lunch, and you're apt to find yourself
standing in mud up to your knees in one of these mud holes--wrong end
up! And that wouldn't be becoming at all for an American millionaire."

Lounsbury opened his mouth several times. The same number of times he
shut it again. "I see," he said at last, clearly.

"Good. And here's some clothes of mine. They're not handsome, and
they'll not fit, but they'll keep you dry."

He dumped the larger portion of his own waterproofs on the ground at
Lounsbury's feet.

VI

In the two days that followed, the pack train crossed the divide into
Clearwater. From now on the little rivers, gathering headway as they
coursed down into the ravines, flowed into the Grizzly and from thence
into the great Yuga, far below. The party had crossed ridge on ridge,
hill on hill that were a bewilderment to Virginia; they had gained the
high places where the marmots whistled shrill and clear at the mouth of
their rocky burrows and the caribou paced, white manes gleaming, in the
snow; they had seen a grizzly on the far-away slide rock; they had lost
their way and found it again; walked abrupt hillsides where the horses
could scarcely carry their packs, descended into mysterious, still
gullies, forded creeks and picked their way through treacherous marshes;
and made their noon camp on the very summit of a high ridge. The snow
was deeper here--nearly eighteen inches--but the gray clouds were
breaking apart in the sky. Apparently the storm was over, for the time
being at least.

They had trouble with slipping packs on the steep pitches of the
morning's march and made slow progress. Bill glanced at his watch with
displeasure. He rushed through the noon meal and cut their usual rest
short by a full half-hour.

"We're behind schedule," he explained, "and we've got a bad half-day
before us. I was counting on making Gray Lake cabin to-night, and we've
got to hurry to do it."

"That is beyond Grizzly River," Lounsbury remarked.

Bill turned in some wonder. He hadn't know that Lounsbury was so well
acquainted with the topography of the region. Stra