surface was seamed with white by a little
bitter wind. Sombre clouds rolled lower down the surrounding hills,
and Seaforth was glad to stretch his weary limbs under the lee of a big
boulder while the fire snapped and crackled in front of him.

"I wonder when we shall see this lake again," he said.

Alton, who was busy with the frypan, turned and stirred the fire, and
the sparks and smoke whirled about them before a stinging blast. "I
don't know," he said, glancing at a smear of whiteness that swept
athwart the lake. "It depends upon the weather, and I'm not pleased
with that to-night. You see the Chinook winds would keep off the snow."

"Of course," said Seaforth, who knew that the warm breezes from the
Pacific occasionally drive back the rigorous winter that turns the
northern portion of the mountain province into a white desolation.
"They usually do, but we'll surmise that in place of them we get the
back-draughts from the Pole?"

"Then," said Alton dryly, "it would be a good deal nicer down at
Somasco. Are you sorry you didn't stop there, Charley?"

Seaforth threw an armful of fir wood upon the fire with somewhat
unnecessary violence. "You are not so pleasant as you might be
to-night," he said.

Alton rose and stretched himself. "I wouldn't worry about me. It
seems to me we are both of us feeling lonely, and that's curious,
because when we had him Okanagan wasn't any special kind of a
companionable man. There was a time when you would have been driving
to dinner with a diamond pin stuck in you and silk stockings on about
this time, Charley?"

Seaforth laughed. "I scarcely think either of the things are in common
masculine use," he said. "There, however, was a time when I walked
into a British Columbian mining camp with my whole wardrobe on my back
and, I think, fifty cents in my pocket. Still, what you ask me
suggests a not quite unwarranted question. What are you going to do
with Carnaby, Harry?"

"I don't know yet. I'm not sure it's mine, you see."

"Your grandfather left it you," said Seaforth; "and it was his."

"Yes," said Alton gravely. "He did, but he tacked a kind of condition
on to it, and--well, that's about all I can tell you, Charley."

"Of course!" and Seaforth smiled curiously. "I would not have asked
you, only I am your partner, and when you're Alton of Carnaby you will
have no more use for me."

Alton seemed to sigh. "I am," he said simply, "Alton of Somasco, and I
fan