ked it in his approach, even as he had ignored the nearer
throbbing of the machinery, which was so violent as to impart a decided
tremor to the slight edifice, and to shake the speaker so strongly that
he was obliged while speaking to steady himself by the sashless frame
of the window at which he stood. He had a face of good-natured and alert
intelligence, a master's independence and authority of manner, in spite
of his blue jean overalls and flannel shirt.

"Don't mention it," said the stranger, smiling with equal but more
deliberate good-humor. Then, seeing that his interlocutor still
lingered a hospitable moment in spite of his quick eyes and the jarring
impatience of the machinery, he added hesitatingly, "I fancy I've
wandered off the track a bit. Do you know a Mr. Bradley--somewhere
here?"

The stranger's hesitation seemed to be more from some habitual
conscientiousness of statement than awkwardness. The man in the window
replied, "I'm Bradley."

"Ah! Thank you: I've a letter for you--somewhere. Here it is." He
produced a note from his breast-pocket. Bradley stooped to a sitting
posture in the window. "Pitch it up." It was thrown and caught cleverly.
Bradley opened it, read it hastily, smiled and nodded, glanced behind
him as if to implore further delay from the impatient machinery, leaned
perilously from the window, and said,--

"Look here! Do you see that silver-fir straight ahead?"

"Yes."

"A little to the left there's a trail. Follow it and skirt along the
edge of the canyon until you see my house. Ask for my wife--that's Mrs.
Bradley--and give her your letter. Stop!" He drew a carpenter's pencil
from his pocket, scrawled two or three words across the open sheet
and tossed it back to the stranger. "See you at tea! Excuse me--Mr.
Mainwaring--we're short-handed--and--the engine--" But here he
disappeared suddenly.

Without glancing at the note again, the stranger quietly replaced it
in his pocket, and struck out across the fallen trunks towards the
silver-fir. He quickly found the trail indicated by Bradley, although it
was faint and apparently worn by a single pair of feet as a shorter and
private cut from some more travelled path. It was well for the stranger
that he had a keen eye or he would have lost it; it was equally
fortunate that he had a mountaineering instinct, for a sudden profound
deepening of the blue mist seen dimly through the leaves before him
caused him to slacken his steps. The trail