He rode with them on the tote team to the northern jaws of Pogey Notch the next day, and sent them on, nestled in a bower of blankets. There had been no further word between them of the great thing that had come into their lives. They tacitly and joyously accepted it all, and left the solution of its problem to saner and happier days. But the face that she turned back to him as she rode away under the frowning rocks was a glowing promise of all he asked of life. And as he plodded back up the trail he went to his toil with tingling muscles and a triumphant soul. CHAPTER XXIV THE CHEESE RIND THAT NEEDED SHARP TEETH "So, mister, please excuse us, but you open up that sluice, Or Gawd have mercy on ye, if I turn these gents here loose!" --The Rapogenus Ball. Rodburd Ide, fresh-arrived from Castonia in hot haste, saw well to it that he and Dwight Wade were safe from interruption in the wangan camp. He even drove a sliver from the wood-box over the latch of the door. Wade, summoned down from the chopping by a breathless cookee to meet his partner, gazed upon these nervous, eager precautions in some alarm. "Now, brace your feet, and get hold of something and hang on hard," advised the "Mayor of Castonia." "Good Heavens, Mr. Ide, what has happened to her?" gasped the young man. His trembling hands clutched at the edge of the splint table, hallowed by Elva Barrett's smiles of love across it. "Her!" snorted the little man, in indignant astonishment. "You don't think I've whaled up here hell-ti-larrup on a jumper to sit down and talk about women, do you?" "But Miss Barrett--" gulped Wade. "Miss Barrett--" Ide checked himself, discreet even in his impatience. "Miss Barrett is all right, and the girl is all right, and--say, look-a-here, my boy, don't you think of a girl, don't you look at a girl, don't you even dream of a girl, for the next two months!" He drove his hard little fist upon the sacred table.