and she seemed to feel that this was the reality, the environment man was created for, and she, wrapped in the tinsel of civilization, out of place in the primeval wilderness.  Her father, immaculate as ever in his travelling tweeds, with his lean, pallid face, also jarred upon the picture, and Harry the teamster, bronzed by frost and sun, with the stain of the soil upon him, alone a part of its harmonies.  They seemed no longer harsh and barbaric, but vast and subtle, and she felt she must go back to the simplicity she had laid aside before she could grasp their meaning.

It was the man who first broke the silence.  “I was wondering if you would like a cigar, sir?” he said.

Deringham glanced at the Indian-wrought case, which was singularly artistic, somewhat dubiously, but remembering that something was due to their host, drew a cigar out and lighted it.  He said nothing for a minute, and then turned to the teamster.

“Wherever did you get cigars of that kind from?  They are far better than any I could find in Winnipeg,” he said.

Miss Deringham noticed the man’s eyes close a trifle, and fancied that very little would call the steely sparkle she had seen when the pack-ponies blocked the trail into them.

“Well,” he said quietly, “a friend of mine sent them me, and I believe they came from Cuba.  We don’t raise cigars of any kind in British Columbia.”

Miss Deringham saw her father’s face, and felt quietly amused.  He could, she knew, assume a manner which went far to carry him smoothly through discontented share-holders’ meetings, but it seemed that the men who dwelt in the wilderness were at least as exigent as those who dwelt in London.  Deringham, however, glanced at the speaker.

“The least said is often the soonest mended, but if you think——­” he said.

The teamster laughed.  “It should come from me, but the fact is I was worrying about that wagon and forgot,” he said.  “Now, if there is anything I can tell you about this country.”

“I wonder,” said Alice Deringham, “whether you know Mr. Alton of Somasco.”

“Oh, yes,” said the man, with a little smile.

“You have worked for him possibly?” said the girl.

Harry the teamster nodded.  “Considerably harder than I ever did for anybody else,” he said.

The next question required some consideration, and he appeared to ruminate over it.  “You mean what kind of man he is?” he said.  “Well, he’s not very much to look at, and there are a good many things he don’t know.”

“So I should have fancied,” said the girl, more to herself than the listener, and wondered whether it was an effect of the firelight or the curious twinkle had once more flashed into his eyes.  “You do not seem to like him?” she said.

The man looked into the fire.  “The trouble is I know how mean he is,” he said.

“Mean?” said the girl.  “That is niggardly?”