coat over his shoulders; but
McFarlane rode steadily on, clad only in his shirtsleeves, unmindful of
the wet. Berrie, however, approved Wayland's caution. "That's right; keep
dry," she called back. "Don't pay attention to father, he'd rather get
soaked any day than unroll his slicker. You mustn't take him for model
yet awhile."

He no longer resented her sweet solicitude, although he considered
himself unentitled to it, and he rejoiced under the shelter of his fine
new coat. He began to perceive that one could be defended against a
storm.

After passing two depressing marshes, they came to a hillside so steep,
so slippery, so dark, so forbidding, that one of the pack-horses balked,
shook his head, and reared furiously, as if to say "I can't do it, and I
won't try." And Wayland sympathized with him. The forest was gloomy and
cold, and apparently endless.

After coaxing him for a time with admirable gentleness, the Supervisor,
at Berrie's suggestion, shifted part of the load to her own saddle-horse,
and they went on.

Wayland, though incapable of comment--so great was the demand upon his
lungs--was not too tired to admire the power and resolution of the girl,
who seemed not to suffer any special inconvenience from the rarefied air.
The dryness of his open mouth, the throbbing of his troubled pulse, the
roaring of his breath, brought to him with increasing dismay the fact
that he had overlooked another phase of the ranger's job. "I couldn't
chop a hole through one of these windfalls in a week," he admitted, as
McFarlane's blade again liberated them from a fallen tree. "To do office
work at six thousand feet is quite different from swinging an ax up here
at timber-line," he said to the girl. "I guess my chest is too narrow for
high altitudes."

"Oh, you'll get used to it," she replied, cheerily. "I always feel it a
little at first; but I really think it's good for a body, kind o'
stretches the lungs." Nevertheless, she eyed him with furtive anxiety.

He was beginning to be hungry also--he had eaten a very early
breakfast--and he fell to wondering just where and when they were to
camp; but he endured in silence. "So long as Berrie makes no complaint my
mouth is shut," he told himself. "Surely I can stand it if she can." And
so struggled on.

Up and up the pathway looped, crossing minute little boggy meadows, on
whose bottomless ooze the grass shook like a blanket, descending steep
ravines and climbing back to dark a