had recognized what was expected
of him, and had immediately set about doing it, without any
consideration for his safety, or, indeed, for that of his men. Gregory
Kinnaird was not a man of marked ability, but he was, at least, one
who could be relied on to attempt the carrying out of a duty he had
undertaken, at any cost to himself, and this is, after all, a good
deal to say in the favor of any man.

Ida had thought of him with a certain tenderness during the last
half-hour. She liked these simple, downright men, and fancied that the
absence of ostentation which usually characterized them was
essentially English, though she had certainly met a few in that
country who came under quite a different category. They were
continually posing; men who could not afford to be natural lest they
should give themselves away. Though she liked him, Gregory Kinnaird
had, however, passed out of her life. There was a good deal he could
have offered her, but, after all, she had almost as much already in
Canada, and it had become suddenly clear to her, outside of a London
ballroom one evening, that to like the man one would have to live with
was by no means going far enough. She also admitted that she could
have gone considerably further in the case of the man on whose account
she had been somewhat anxiously turning over _The Colonist_, which she
had done regularly during the last few weeks, without, she fancied,
her father, who purchased a good many provincial papers, becoming
aware of it.

There was, however, once more nothing whatever in it about the
adventures of any prospectors, though the paper in question now and
then detailed such things at length; and she laid it down with a
little sigh of weariness, for two men, in one of whom she was
interested, had gone up into the wilderness some time earlier, and
nothing apparently had been heard of them since. Gregory Kinnaird had,
it seemed, won credit as well as blame, serving the Empire under arms
in steamy Africa; but it was, she felt, a sterner and longer fight the
men who were up against it--and she liked the expressive phrase--made
with savage nature in the west.

After all, the rush on a rebel stockade was soon over, while it seemed
to her that the march through the black pine forest, half-fed, with
provisions running out, the sleeping in dripping fern or slushy snow,
and the staggering along the rangeside under a crushing load for days
together, with galled feet and shoulders th