ch! Why, what time is it?" cried Bob.

"One o'clock by my watch, ten minutes since we started by my mind, and
six o'clock to-night by my appetite," said Paul.

Seated on the ground, eating a thick sandwich and devouring Heinz's
pickles, Barbara sighed ecstatically.

"There never was such food," said she.

"And that for your sated New York appetite!" laughed Paul.

After lunch Bill decreed a rest for man and beast. He made a couch of
pine needles for Bob, threw down her blanket on it, and betook himself
off with the ponies. Bob stretched out on her bed, Trent sitting beside
her to smoke.

"Better take a nap," he suggested.

"Oh, I'm not at all sleepy," said she, and was off before she finished
the sentence.

Trent sat, smiled, puffed, and looked off to the end of the world and
back again at the sleeping girl. He lay on his back and stared up at the
sky, glad of life, of health, glad, yes--he admitted it--glad of
Barbara.

When Bill came back Paul laid his hand on Bob's and brought her to a
sitting position, rubbing her eyes and blinking from deep sleep.

"I must have dropped off for a minute," she apologized.

"Yes, an hour or two."

"What?"

"You've been asleep for an hour."

"The divil I have! Did I miss anything?"

"A million-dollar panorama."

"Don't you let me sleep like that again, Paul Trent. I can sleep in a
New York hotel to the tune of the Elevated. Did you sleep?"

"Yes."

"That helps some."

They rode through the late afternoon, when the air was like amber;
through the time of the setting sun, when the world was like a glass
prism of many colours; through the shadow time, when long bars of blue
lay below in the valley to mark the mountains. Then, just before the
red disk burned into the mountain top and disappeared, Bill announced
camp for the night.

A mountain stream bounded and roared along beside the place. A hut had
been set up by a logging gang, and a thick bed of hardwood chips and
bark powder marked the spot where the forest giants had met their
inglorious end. Bill attended to the ponies while Bob and Paul collected
firewood.

Supper was a silent function--the silence of people who understand each
other and need not talk. Bob smiled at Paul when their eyes met, and for
the rest, they looked off over a sample of God's handiwork that made
man-talk as futile as monkey chatter.

"Do ye want to sleep in the cabin, Mrs. Bob?"

They both smiled at his appropriation of her nam