five or six dollars. We'll call it eight to make more certain, and
I'll pacify him if you'll hand me twelve."

"Twelve dollars," sang the axman, "or the horse! Bring them out!"

"It's worse than holding up a train," complained the hotel-keeper.
"Still, I'll part with it for the pleasure of getting rid of you."

He did so; and when Weston, who pocketed the money, inquired when the
next east-bound train left, one of the others recollected that it was
in rather less than half an hour. Some of them got up with a little
difficulty, and Grenfell looked at Weston deprecatingly.

"You mustn't hurry me," he observed, "my knees have given out again."

They set out in a body, two of them assisting Grenfell, who smiled at
the men assembled in the unpaved street to witness their departure.
There were eight of them altogether, including the man who still
carried the ax, which, it transpired later, belonged to the
hotel-keeper. The soft darkness fell, and the white mists crawled up
the hillside as, laughing harshly, they plodded through the little
wooden town. They were wanderers and vagabonds, but they were also men
who had faced the stinging frost on the ranges and the blinding snow.
They had held their lives lightly as they flung the tall wooden
bridges over thundering canons, or hewed room for the steel track out
of their black recesses with toil incredible. Flood and frost, falling
trees, and giant-powder that exploded prematurely, had as yet failed
to crush the life out of them, and, after all, it is, perhaps, men of
their kind who have set the deepest mark upon the wilderness.

CHAPTER XI

IN THE MOONLIGHT

It was, as far as outward appearances went, a somewhat disreputable
company that had assembled in the little station when the whistle of
the Atlantic train came ringing up the track, and Weston would have
been just as much pleased if the agent had provided a little less
illumination. Several big lamps had just been lighted, though, there
was a bright moon in the sky, and Grenfell, who was dressed for the
most part in thorn-rent rags, sat on a pile of express freight amidst
a cluster of his new comrades discoursing maudlin philosophy. The
other man, who still clung to the hotel-keeper's ax, was recounting
with dramatic force how he had once killed a panther on Vancouver
Island with a similar weapon, and, when he swung the heavy blade round
his head, there was a momentary scattering of the crowd of loungers,
w