increased mightily.

She insisted on her father's turning back. "We don't need you," she said.
"I can find the pass."

McFarlane's faith in his daughter had been tested many times, and yet he
was a little loath to have her start off on a trail new to her. He argued
against it briefly, but she laughed at his fears. "I can go anywhere you
can," she said. "Stand clear!" With final admonition he stood clear.

"You'll have to keep off the boggy meadows," he warned; "these rains will
have softened all those muck-holes on the other side; they'll be
bottomless pits; watch out for 'em. Good-by! If you meet Nash hurry him
along. Moore is anxious to run those lines. Keep in touch with Landon,
and if anybody turns up from the district office say I'll be back on
Friday. Good luck."

"Same to you. So long."

Berea led the way, and Norcross fell in behind the pack-horses, feeling
as unimportant as a small boy at the heels of a circus parade. His girl
captain was so competent, so self-reliant, and so sure that nothing he
could say or do assisted in the slightest degree. Her leadership was a
curiously close reproduction of her father's unhurried and graceful
action. Her seat in the saddle was as easy as Landon's, and her eyes were
alert to every rock and stream in the road. She was at home here, where
the other girl would have been a bewildered child, and his words of
praise lifted the shadow from her face.

The sky was cloudy, and a delicious feeling of autumn was in the
air--autumn that might turn to winter with a passing cloud, and the
forest was dankly gloomy and grimly silent, save from the roaring stream
which ran at times foam-white with speed. The high peaks, gray and
streaked with new-fallen snow, shone grandly, bleakly through the firs.
The radiant beauty of the road from the Springs, the golden glow of four
days before was utterly gone, and yet there was exultation in this ride.
A distinct pleasure, a delight of another sort, lay in thus daring the
majesty of an unknown wind-swept pass.

Wayland called out: "The air feels like Thanksgiving morning, doesn't
it?"

"It _is_ Thanksgiving for me, and I'm going to get a grouse for dinner,"
she replied; and in less than an hour the snap of her rifle made good her
promise.

After leaving the upper lake she turned to the right and followed the
course of a swift and splendid stream, which came churning through a
cheerless, mossy swamp of spruce-trees. Inexperienced as he was