“Trixit holds securities of ours for money advanced to the mill by himself privately.  They do not appear on the books, but if he chooses to declare them as assets of the bank, it’s a bad thing for us.  If he is bold enough to keep them, he may be willing to make some arrangement with us to carry them on.  If he has got away or committed suicide, as some say, it’s for you to find the whereabouts of the securities and get them.  He is said to have been last seen near the Summit.  You understand our position?”

Masterton did, with suppressed disgust.  But he was young, and there was the thrill of adventure in this.  “I will go,” he said quietly.

“We thought you would.  You must take the up stage to-night.  Come again and get your final instructions.  By the way, you might get some information at Trixit’s house.  You—­er—­er—­are acquainted with his daughter, I think?”

“Which makes it quite impossible for me to seek her for such a purpose,” said Masterton coldly.

A few hours later he was on the coach.  As they cleared the outskirts of the town, they passed two Chinamen plodding sturdily along in the dust of the highway.

*****

Mr. Masterton started from a slight doze in the heavy, lumbering “mountain wagon” which had taken the place of the smart Concord coach that he had left at the last station.  The scenery, too, had changed; the four horses threaded their way through rocky defiles of stunted larches and hardy “brush,” with here and there open patches of shrunken snow.  Yet at the edge of declivities he could still see through the rolled-up leather curtains the valley below bathed in autumn, the glistening rivers half spent with the long summer drought, and the green slopes rolling upward into crest after crest of ascending pines.  At times a drifting haze, always imperceptible from below, veiled the view; a chill wind blew through the vehicle, and made the steel sledge-runners that hung beneath the wagon, ready to be shipped under the useless wheels, an ominous provision.  A few rude “stations,” half blacksmith shops, half grocery, marked the deserted but wellworn road; along, narrow “packer’s” wagon, or a tortuous file of Chinamen carrying mysterious bundles depending from bamboo poles, was their rare and only company.  The rough sheepskin jackets which these men wore over their characteristic blue blouses and their heavy leggings were a new revelation to Masterton, accustomed to the thinly clad coolie of the mines.  They seemed a distinct race.

“I never knew those chaps get so high up, but they seem to understand the cold,” he remarked.

The driver looked up, and ejaculated his disgust and his tobacco juice at the same moment.