in the village of Black
Rock, with my traps all packed, waiting for the stage to start for the
Landing, thirty miles away, he bore down upon me with resistless force,
and I found myself recovering from my surprise only after we had gone in
his lumber sleigh some six miles on our way to his camp up in the
mountains. I was surprised and much delighted, though I would not allow
him to think so, to find that his old-time power over me was still
there. He could always in the old varsity days--dear, wild days--make
me do what he liked. He was so handsome and so reckless, brilliant in
his class work, and the prince of half backs on the Rugby field, and
with such power of fascination as would "extract the heart out of a
wheelbarrow," as Barney Lundy used to say. And thus it was that I found
myself just three weeks later--I was to have spent two or three days--on
the afternoon of December 24, standing in Graeme's Lumber Camp No. 2,
wondering at myself. But I did not regret my changed plans, for in those
three weeks I had raided a cinnamon bear's den and had wakened up a
grizzly---- But I shall let the grizzly finish the tale; he probably
sees more humor in it than I.

The camp stood in a little clearing, and consisted of a group of three
long, low shanties with smaller shacks near them, all built of heavy,
unhewn logs, with door and window in each. The grub camp, with cook-shed
attached, stood in the middle of the clearing; at a little distance was
the sleeping camp with the office built against it, and about a hundred
yards away on the other side of the clearing stood the stables, and near
them the smiddy. The mountains rose grandly on every side, throwing up
their great peaks into the sky. The clearing in which the camp stood was
hewn out of a dense pine forest that filled the valley and climbed
halfway up the mountain sides and then frayed out in scattered and
stunted trees.

It was one of those wonderful Canadian winter days, bright, and with a
touch of sharpness in the air that did not chill, but warmed the blood
like drafts of wine. The men were up in the woods, and the shrill scream
of the bluejay flashing across the open, the impudent chatter of the red
squirrel from the top of the grub camp, and the pert chirp of the
whisky-jack, hopping about on the rubbish-heap, with the long, lone cry
of the wolf far down the valley, only made the silence felt the more.

As I stood drinking in with all my soul the glorious beauty a