the full splendour of the glacier was upon them to their left;
and then for a space they must divine it as a presence behind the
actual, faintly gleaming and flashing through the serried ranks of the
forest. There were heaths and mosses under the pines; but otherwise for
a while the path was flowerless; and Elizabeth discontentedly remarked
it. Anderson smiled.

"Wait a little--or you'll have to apologise to the Rockies."

He looked down upon her, and saw that her small face had bloomed into a
vivacity and charm that startled him. Was it only the physical effort
and pleasure of the climb? As for himself, it took all the power of a
strong will to check the happy tumult in his heart.

Elizabeth asked him of his Saskatchewan journey. He described to her the
growing town he hoped to represent--the rush of its new life.

"On one Sunday morning there was nothing--the bare prairie; by the
next--so to speak--there was a town all complete, with a hotel, an
elevator, a bank, and a church. That was ten years ago. Then the railway
came; I saw the first train come in, garlanded and wreathed with
flowers. Now there are eight thousand people. They have reserved land
for a park along the river, and sent for a landscape gardener from
England to lay it out; they have made trees grow on the prairie; they
have built a high school and a concert hall; the municipality is full of
ambitions; and all round the town, settlers are pouring in. On market
day you find yourself in a crowd of men, talking cattle and crops, the
last thing in binders and threshers, as farmers do all over the world.
But yet you couldn't match that crowd in the old world."

"Which you don't know," put in Elizabeth, with her sly smile.

"Which I don't know," repeated Anderson meekly. "But I guess. And I am
thinking of sayings of yours. Where in Europe can you match the sense of
_boundlessness_ we have here--boundless space, boundless opportunity? It
often makes fools of us: it intoxicates, turns our heads. There is a
germ of madness in this Northwest. I have seen men destroyed by it. But
it is Nature who is the witch. She brews the cup."

"All very well for the men," Elizabeth said, musing--"and the strong
men. About the women in this country I can't make up my mind."

"You think of the drudgery, the domestic hardships?"

"There are some ladies in the hotel, from British Columbia. They are in
easy circumstances--and the daughter is dying of overwork! The husband
h