Free The Gold Trail by Harold Bindloss

idea of what one would have to face floundering over the snow-barred passes into the great desolation in winter time.
    "Well," she asked quietly, "what did you do then?"
    "We worked in a logging camp until spring, and then I went down to Vancouver to raise money for the next campaign. Nobody seemed inclined to let me have any, for which one couldn't very well blame them. After all," and Weston laughed softly, "the thing looks uncommonly crazy. Later on, we got a pass to do some track-grading back east, on one of the prairie lines, and when we'd saved a few dollars I started to try my luck in Montreal."
    Ida said nothing for a few moments. She could fill in most of what he left untold, and it seemed to her that one who knew how men lived in the lonely logging camps through the iron winter, or drove the new track across the prairie through the thaw slush in spring, could make an epic of such a theme. It was toil that taxed man's utmost strength of body and mind, under the Arctic frost, and, what was even worse to bear, in half-thawed mire. She had once seen the track-graders trooping back, wet to the skin, worn out, and clogged with soil to the knees, to the reeking shanty which was filled with the foul steam of drying clothes. As the result of it all, Weston had, perhaps, saved less money than she often spent on one gown. She felt very compassionate toward him, and he was troubled by the softness in her eyes. He felt that if he watched her too closely he might lose his head.
    "I tried to study a few works on trigonometry and surveying during the winter, but it was a little difficult," he said. "For one thing, if you sat near the stove in the logging shack the light was dim, and you couldn't very well read anywhere else in the frost we had. Besides that, the boys generally insisted on everybody's playing cards, and if any one refused they had a playful trick of throwing things at him."
    The girl, who had imagination, could picture the dimly-lighted shanty and the bronzed and ragged men flinging their long boots, as well as very pointed badinage, at the comrade who tried to read. It would, she admitted, certainly be a little difficult to study trigonometry in such surroundings.
    "You see, I wanted to go into the thing systematically," continued Weston, who felt that he was safest when he kept on talking. "We have decided that Verneille couldn't have made more than forty miles from the lake, and, as he was heading south, that gives us at most a sweep of about a hundred and twenty miles to search, though the whole of it is practically a nest of mountains. As I wasn't able to read up the subject quite as much as I should have liked, we have thought of hiring a professional surveyor and raising money enough to spend the whole summer over the thing, even if we have to let the men who help us take a share in the mine."
    "I wonder whether you would be very much offended if some of your friends were to offer to bear part of the expense?" Ida asked quietly.
    "I'm afraid I couldn't permit it." The man's face flushed. "They probably would never get their money back. After all, it's only a wild-cat scheme."
    "That doesn't sound very convincing," said Ida. "Haven't you another reason?"
    She had expected to find the suggestion useless when she made it, for she understood his attitude. He would not take her money, and that, of course, was in one respect just as she would have had it; but, on the other hand, there were so many difficulties, and probably hazards, that she could save him.
    "Well," he said quietly, "it's the only reason I can offer."
    There was silence for almost half a minute, and Ida felt that it was becoming singularly uncomfortable. So much could have been said by both of them that their conversation up to this point had suggested to her the crossing of a river on very thin ice. On the surface it was smooth, but the stream ran strong below, and there was the possibility that at any moment one of them might plunge through. Pride