thing in the
west for a packer or a ranch hand to converse with his employers or
their friends on familiar terms, and it occurred to her that it was a
trifle superfluous for him to insist on reminding her of his status
when she was willing to forget it. Still, she was quite aware that
this man had not always been a packer, and she was conscious of an
increasing curiosity concerning his past.

"That is an unusual experience with you?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," said Weston. "Anyway, during the last few years."

She was foiled again, for she could not press the question more
closely; and, sitting still in the shadow, she looked up between the
dark fir branches at the line of gleaming snow and the great rock
rampart beneath which they had crept.

"Were you ever up so high before?" she ventured.

"Yes," said Weston. "I believe so; but never for pleasure. In fact, I
think some of the ranges we crossed on the gold trail must have been
considerably higher. I told you that prospecting is one of my
weaknesses."

"You did," agreed Ida. "It's one I could never understand, though I
have spent some time, in this province. Every now and then it seems
that the rancher must leave his clearing and wander off into the bush.
As you admitted, he generally comes home dressed in rags, and very
seldom brings anything with him. Why do you do it?"

Weston laughed in a rather curious fashion.

"Oh," he said, "don't you know? Did you never feel, even in winter in
Montreal, when you had skating-rinks, toboggan-slides, snow-shoe
meets, and sleigh-rides to keep you amused, that it was all growing
tiresome and very stale? Haven't you felt that you wanted
something--something you hadn't got and couldn't define--though you
might recognize it when you found it?"

Once more Ida's eyebrows straightened. He was going rather deeper than
she had supposed him capable, though she was not altogether
unacquainted with the restlessness he had described. Weston glanced at
her face, and nodded.

"Well," he said, "that's very much what happens to the rancher and the
track-grader every now and then; and when it does he goes up into the
bush--prospecting. Still, I think you were wrong when you said that we
seldom bring back anything. Did you bring nothing down with you from
the quiet and the glimmering moonlight up yonder above the timber
line?"

His companion looked up across the climbing forest to the desolation
of rock and snow through which she had wand