ing a solicitor, I endeavored in the meantime to forget
the disagreeable affair. Then one morning, when the snow lay thick on the
shingles, and the creek in the ravine was frozen almost to the bottom, the
fur-wrapped postman brought me a letter from Harry.

"I have only good news," it ran. "We have piled up beams and stringers
ahead of contract, and sold a number of logs a snow-slide brought us at a
good profit, ready for floating down to a new sawmill in the valley. That,
however, is by the way. As you know, Johnston has quartz reefs on the
brain, and now fancies he is really on the track of one. There have been
rumors of rich gold west of the Fraser, and one of our prospecting friends
came in almost snow-blind with promising specimens. Nothing will stop
Johnston, and I'm bitten myself, so the fact is we're going up to find
that gold. Of course, it's the wrong time; but there'll be a rush in spite
of that. In short, we want you, and I managed to secure this railroad
pass."

I showed Aline the letter, and she said, "Why don't you go? I can stay
with the Kenyons; they have often asked me. It would be splendid, wouldn't
it, if you were to find a gold mine?"

I nodded rather gravely. Gold mines worth developing are singularly hard
to find, and when found generally need a large capital to work them, while
the company financier gets the pickings. The steady following up of one
consistent plan more commended itself to me, and prospecting in mid-winter
would try the strength of a giant. Still, if my partners were bent on it
they would naturally expect me to humor them in the matter, and there was
a hope of seeing Grace, so I answered:

"I wish they had never heard of it; but, if Mrs. Kenyon will take care of
you for a few weeks, I must go."

Aline was evidently prepared to bear my absence philosophically, and,
perhaps because one of Mrs. Kenyon's sons was a handsome stripling, she
spent all day sewing, while I gathered up my belongings and rode over to
interview that lady, who had lately come out from Ontario, and professed
herself delighted to receive my sister. Thus it happened that one morning
before daybreak I stood beside a burdened pack-horse with a load of forty
pounds strapped about my shoulders, outside a log shanty, ready to strike
out into the snow-bound northern wilderness. Johnston, who was in high
spirits, held the bridle of another horse, and Harry whistled gaily as
with the assistance of a prospector he str