e."

"How?" asked Ida.

"You haven't been in England or you'd understand. The people who live
in those old places are often very poor, but a certain number of them
have something that the people who have only money would give a good
deal to possess. As a matter of fact, though distinctly human in most
respects, they are--different."

Ida laughed.

"Oh," she said, "I've naturally heard of that. It's quite an old
notion, and didn't originate with you English people. Didn't the Roman
emperors claim to have the Imperial purple in their veins? Still, out
here, when we speak of a man appreciatively we say his blood is--red."

"And that's the color of packer Weston's."

A faint gleam crept into Ida's eyes as she remembered the white-faced
man who had limped out of camp one morning almost too weary to drag
himself along.

"Well," she said, "I think you ought to know. When he went back up the
range for you he left a trail of it behind him."

Her companion had no opportunity for answering, for Major Kinnaird
came back from the smoking end of the car just then, and when he spoke
to Ida his daughter took up a book she had laid down.

In the meanwhile, a mountain locomotive and a train of flat cars came
clanking into the station where Weston waited. Swinging himself onto
one he took his place among the men who sat on the rails with which
the car was loaded. Then, as the big locomotive slowly pulled them
out, some of his new companions vituperated the station-agent for
stopping them, and one came near braining him with a deftly-flung
bottle when he retaliated. There were a good many more men perched on
the other cars, and Weston concluded, from the burst of hoarse
laughter that reached him through the roar of wheels, that all of them
were not wholly sober. They had been recruited in Vancouver, and
included a few runaway sailormen. One told him that they were going
into the ranges to fill up a muskeg, and he expressed his opinion of
the meanness of the company for not sending them up in a Colonist
train, and offered to throw Weston off the car if he did not agree
with him. He explained that he had already pitched off two of his
companions.

Weston endeavored to pacify him; but, failing in this and in an
attempt to crawl over the couplings into the adjoining car, he
reluctantly grappled with the man and succeeded in throwing him into a
corner. Then one of the others rose and stood over his prostrate
comrade with a big bil