the smoke of a great gun, and
the powder that settled thick upon him clogged his eyelashes and
filled his nostrils. The horse plunged viciously and came near
dragging him off his feet.

After that there was for a few seconds a silence that seemed
oppressive by contrast, until it was suddenly broken by another
startling crash. It was repeated here and there, as though when each
tree fell the concussion brought down another, and the brulee was
filled with shocks of sound that rang in tremendous reverberations
along the steep rocks. In the meanwhile the men stood fast with tense,
blackened faces peering at the eddying dust out of half-blinded eyes,
until the crashes grew less frequent and there was deep silence again.

Then Weston, who patted the trembling horse, sat down and pointed to
the great, shapeless pile of half-burned wood and charcoal close in
front of him.

"A near thing. I think I'll have a smoke," he said.

"A smoke!" gasped Grenfell. "With your mouth and tongue like an
ash-pit! I'd much sooner have a sherry cobbler, as they used to make
it with a big lump of ice swimming in it, at the--it's the club, I
mean. That is," he added, with a sigh, "if I could get it."

"You can't," observed Devine, dryly. "I'd be content with water. But
didn't you break off rather suddenly in one place?"

"You're young," said Grenfell, looking at him solemnly. "If you
weren't, I should regard that observation as an impertinence. I said
the club, which is sufficient. They used to make you really excellent
sherry cobblers there."

"Well," said Devine, with his eyes twinkling, "I guess it is, and the
name was half out when you stopped. I was naturally never inside the
place in question, but I've been in Montreal. It's kind of curious,
isn't it, to find a man who talks about such things leading a forlorn
hope, as you call it?"

"No," said Grenfell, "it isn't curious at all. There are cases in
which a fondness for sherry cobblers provides a sufficient explanation
for greater incongruities."

It was apparently a relief to talk of something, for there was no
doubt that all of them had felt the tension of the last few minutes;
but Weston cut short the discussion.

"We must get water to-morrow, anyway," he said. "Had you any trouble
about it, Grenfell, the time you struck the lake?"

Grenfell sat down on a fragment of the charred log and seemed to
consider.

"No," he said slowly. "That is, we didn't quite run out of it, thou