tribute to your own bravery. I'll leave you half a dozen men
who'll camp in the road opposite your lodgings, and see you safely back to
the main line to-morrow. They're most sober Calvinists, with convictions
of the Cromwellian kind, and I don't think any of our late disturbers will
care to interfere with them."

When we approached the tents, chanting weird songs of victory, the
surveyor met us, and in answer to his questions Johnston laughed.

"The temperance meeting was an unqualified success," he said. "We've
broken up all the bottles in the Magnolia saloon--Lee reveled among them
with a hammer. Then we made all the malcontents we could catch sign the
pledge, and you'll find the chief dissenter behind there on the
stretcher."

"Glad to hear it," remarked the surveyor, dryly. "Judging by your
appearance the proceedings must have been of the nature of an Irish
fair."

I remember that when we discussed the affair later Johnston said, "What
did I do it for? Well, perhaps from a sense of fairness, or because that
girl's courage got hold of me. Don't set up as a reformer--that's not me;
but I've a weakness for downright if blundering sincerity, and I fancied I
could indirectly help them a little."

The next morning we were astonished to find that Hemlock Jim had gone.
"Thought he was dyin' last night!" said the watcher, "and as that didn't
matter I went to sleep; woke up, and there wasn't a trace of him." This
was evidently true, and where he went to remained a mystery, for we heard
no more of Hemlock Jim, though there was a marked improvement in the
morals of Cedar Crossing, while, and this we hardly expected, some of
those who signed that pledge honestly kept it.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HIRED TEAMSTER

Speaking generally, winter is much less severe in British Columbia,
especially near the coast, than it is on the prairie, though it is
sufficiently trying high up among the mountains, where as a rule little
work is done at that season. Still, though the number of the track-layers
was largely reduced, the inhabitants of the mining region had waited long
enough, and so, in spite of many hardships, slowly, fathom by fathom, we
carried the rail-head on.

Now and then for several days together we sat in our log-built shelter
while a blinding snowstorm raged outside and the pines filled the valley
with their roaring. Then there were weeks of bitter frost, when work was
partly suspended, and both rock and soil defied