overed with an old patchwork quilt.

The wagon was of the rudest, clumsiest construction, the heavy box set
on axles without springs, but the young physician was thankful for any
kind of a conveyance. He had been used to life in the wild, taking
things as he found them--bunking in a tent, a board shanty, or out under
the open sky; with men brought heterogeneously together, some merely
rough woodsmen in their natural environment, others the scum of the
cities to whom crime was become first nature, decency second, and
others, fleeing from justice and civilized law, hiding ofttimes a fine
nature delicately reared. During this time he had seldom seen a woman
other than an occasional camp follower of the most degraded sort.

Inured thus, he did not find his ride, embedded with good corn fodder,
much of a hardship, even in a springless wagon over mountain roads.
Wrapped in his rug, he braced himself against his box, with his face
toward the rear of the wagon, and gazed out from under its arching
canvas hood at the wild way, as it slowly unrolled behind them, and was
pleased that he did not have to spend the night under the lee of the
station.

The lingering sunlight made flaming banners of the snow clouds now
slowly drifting across the sky above the white world, and touched the
highest peaks with rose and gold. The shadows, ever changing, deepened
from faintest pink-mauve through heliotrope tints, to the richest violet
in the heart of the gorges. Over and through all was the witching
mystery of fairy-like, snow-wreathed branches and twigs, interwoven and
arching up and up in faint perspective to the heights above, and down,
far down, to the depths of the regions below them; and all the time,
mingled with the murmur of the voices behind him, and the creaking of
the vehicle in which they rode, and the tramp of the animals when they
came to a hard roadbed with rock foundation,--noises which were not
loud, but which seemed to be covered and subdued by the soft snow even
as it covered everything,--could be heard a light dropping and
pattering, as the overladen last year's leaves and twigs dropped their
white burden to the ground. Sometimes the great hood of the wagon struck
an overhanging bough and sent the snow down in showers as they passed.

Heavily they climbed up, and warily made their descent of rocky steeps,
passing through boggy places or splashing in clear streams which issued
from springs in the mountain side or fell