the one streamlet flowed to the Atlantic, that
in its fellow to the Pacific.

Eternal parable of small beginnings and vast fates! But in this setting
of untrodden mountains, and beside this railway which now for a few
short years had been running its parlour and dining cars, its telegraphs
and electric lights and hotels, a winding thread of life and
civilisation, through the lonely and savage splendours of snow-peak and
rock, transforming day by day the destinies of Canada--the parable
became a truth, proved upon the pulses of men.

The party sat down on the grass beside the bright, rippling water, and
Yerkes brought them coffee. While they were taking it, the two
engine-drivers descended from the cab of the engine and began to gather
a few flowers and twigs from spring bushes that grew near. They put them
together and offered them to Lady Merton. She, going to speak to them,
found that they were English and North Country.

"Philip!--Mr. Arthur!--they come from our side of Carlisle!"

Philip looked up with a careless nod and smile. Delaine rose and went to
join her. A lively conversation sprang up between her and the two men.
They were, it seemed, a stalwart pair of friends, kinsmen indeed, who
generally worked together, and were now entrusted with some of the most
important work on the most difficult sections of the line. But they were
not going to spend all their days on the line--not they! Like everybody
in the West, they had their eyes on the land. Upon a particular district
of it, moreover, in Northern Alberta, not yet surveyed or settled. But
they were watching it, and as soon as the "steel gang" of a projected
railway came within measurable distance they meant to claim their
sections and work their land together.

When the conversation came to an end and Elizabeth, who with her
companions had been strolling along the line a little in front of the
train, turned back towards her party, Delaine looked down upon her, at
once anxious to strike the right note, and moodily despondent of
doing it.

"Evidently, two very good fellows!" he said in his rich, ponderous
voice. "You gave them a great pleasure by going to talk to them."

"I?" cried Elizabeth. "They are a perfect pair of gentlemen!--and it is
very kind of them to drive us!"

Delaine laughed uneasily.

"The gradations here are bewildering--or rather the absence of
gradations."

"One gets down to the real thing," said Elizabeth, rather hotly.

Delain