"Likely you'll be a mite crowded, but that's your own fault, fetchin' so much dunnage with you," stated their guide. "You two had better ride in the back there and hold a couple of them biggest grips on your laps. I guess I kin wedge the rest of it into the front seat alongside of me. All set?" he asked. "Let's move then." The car slewed on its tires, then settled deeply into the frozen ruts, jouncing and jerking. "Wouldn't it have been easier traveling with a sleigh?" inquired Mr. Bugbee, speaking rather brokenly between jolts. "Don't do much sleddin' in this country any more--not till later, anyway, when the weather gits set," vouchsafed Mr. Talbot. "A thaw's liable to come and then where would you be with your sled runners? Besides, purty near ever'body up here keeps an ottermobile. Set tight!" he commanded. "We're about to hit a rough place." But by the time he had uttered his warning they had hit it. "Yes, indeed," went on Mr. Talbot, "ottermobiles is come into quite general use. You folks ever been here before? Yes? Then prob'ly you remember the old Turnbull Tavern that used to stand at the forks over to the Cove? Well, it's gone. Tore it away to put up a fillin' station. We got two fillin' stations--that one and one other one--and they's talk of a third one in the spring." Above the obstruction of a suitcase which he balanced precariously upon his knees, Mr. Bugbee peered across a landscape which so far as the immediate foreground was concerned mainly consisted of vistas and aisles of stumps, with puddles of ice and spindly evergreens interspersed and a final garnishing of slashed-off faded limbs. "My recollection is that the wilderness used to come right down to the tracks," he said. "Ef by wilderness you mean standin' spruce timber, then your recollection is right," answered Mr. Talbot over his shoulder and through the folds of a woolen throat comforter. "But it's mostly been lumbered off for pulp. They're figgerin' some on strippin' the ridges of the hard woods next," he added with a touch of local pride for local enterprise. The car took the first steep rise into the range, buck-jumping and slewing like a skittish colt. Frequently it seemed to shy from bump to bump. The task of steering engaged Mr. Talbot. He addressed his vibrating passengers but rarely. "Got a party booked to chore for you," he told Mrs. Bugbee over his shoulder. "Name of Anna Rapley. Widder woman. Had quite a job of it gittin' her to agree to do it. She told me to tell you her wages would be twenty-five a week fur ez long ez you stay." "Twenty-five a week?" echoed Mrs. Bugbee rather blankly. "That's whut she says. Says it's her reg'lar price fur a special job like this one is. Says to tell you to take it or leave it, just ez you please. Says it don't make a bit of difference to her either way. Independent, that's her." "Oh, I'm sure we won't quarrel over the wages!" Mrs. Bugbee hastened to explain. "Of course she's competent?"