e or I'll have fits."

"Was it that sound that scared you?" I asked.

"Ya-as," he replied with a dauntless shiver.

"Was it the voice of the mammoth?" I persisted, excitedly. "Speak,
William, or I'll drag you about and kick you!"

He replied that it was neither a mammoth nor a dingue, and added a
strong request for privacy, which I was obliged to grant, as I could
not torture another word out of him.

I slept little that night; the exciting proximity of the unknown land
was too much for me. But although I lay awake for hours, I heard
nothing except the tinkle of water among the rocks and the plover
calling from some hidden marsh. At daybreak I shot a ptarmigan which
had walked into camp, and the shot set the echoes yelling among the
mountains.

William, sullen and heavy-eyed, dressed the bird, and we broiled it
for breakfast.

Neither he nor I alluded to the sound we had heard the night before;
he boiled water and cleaned up the mess-kit, and I pottered about
among the rocks for another ptarmigan. Wearying of this, presently, I
returned to the mules and William, and sat down for a smoke.

"It strikes me," I said, "that our instructions to 'await further
orders' are idiotic. How are we to receive 'further orders' here?"

William did not know.

"You don't suppose," said I, in sudden disgust, "that Miss Smawl
believes there is a summer hotel and daily mail service in the Hudson
Mountains?"

William thought perhaps she did suppose something of the sort.

It irritated me beyond measure to find myself at last on the very
border of the unknown country, and yet checked, held back, by the
irresponsible orders of a maiden lady named Smawl. However, my salary
depended upon the whim of that maiden lady, and although I fussed and
fumed and glared at the mountains through my glasses, I realized that
I could not stir without the permission of Miss Smawl. At times this
grotesque situation became almost unbearable, and I often went away by
myself and indulged in fantasies, firing my gun off and pretending I
had hit Miss Smawl by mistake. At such moments I would imagine I was
free at last to plunge into the strange country, and I would squat on
a rock and dream of bagging my first mammoth.

The time passed heavily; the tension increased with each new day. I
shot ptarmigan and kept our table supplied with brook-trout. William
chopped wood, conversed with his mules, and cooked very badly.

"See here," I said, one morning;