ld carry up from the creek
side, making the rudest of fireplaces. But it had the merit that it
threw the heat back toward his extended canvas, and there between it
would be snug and warm. All about him, as he laboured, was the singing
of water and, high in air, the singing of pine tops. They made merry
music and King, gone down to the stream to fill his coffee-pot, sang
with it from a full, brimming heart. Gloria was tired, but she was
resting now. And in a little while, when dark came, he and she would sit
by his fire and look into it and talk in hushed voices, hand locked in
hand; they would watch for the first of the big blazing stars to come
out--he and Gloria, alone in the wilderness.

He saw a trout swinging lazily in a quiet pool. Trout for Gloria! He
glanced toward where she lay; he was glad that she was not looking. It
would be a surprise for her. He hurried to his kit in his pack, got out
hook and line, baited with a tiny bit of red flannel, and went back to
the creek. For he knew that it was not likely that the trout here could
have had any remembered encounters with man; they were plentiful and
might, like many other sorts of beings, be lured to their undoing by
curiosity and greed. He cut a willow pole, stood back and cast out his
gay bit of bait, letting it drift with the riffles. There came a quick
tug, another, sharp and vigorous, and he swung his prize out of the
water, breaking the surface into scattering jewels, flashing in the
sunlight as it struck against the grass along the creek's edge.

Dusk gathered while he worked over his fire. The aroma of boiling coffee
rose, crept through the air, blended with the aromas of the woods. He
had made toast, holding the bread to the coals upon a sharpened stick.
There were strips of crisp bacon garnishing a trout browned to the last
painstaking turn. There were fried potatoes, cut by King's pocket-knife
into thin strips and turned into gold by the alchemy of cooking. He set
out his dishes upon a flat-topped rock, replenished his fire, threw on
some fresh-cut green cedar boughs for their delightful fragrance, and
went to call Gloria.

* * * * *

Gloria, too tired bodily and mentally to wage a winning battle against
those black vapours which flock so frequently about luckless youth, had
suffered and yielded and gone down in misery. She had been crying, just
why she knew not; crying because she could not help it. Hers was a state