He forebore to notice her inconsistency. "Yes, the wilderness is all right for a vacation, but I prefer Chicago for the year round." When they came upon Ridgeley, both cried out with delight. "Oh, what a dear, picturesque little town!" she said. "Well, well! I wonder how they came to build a town without a row of battlemented stores?" It lay among and upon the sharp, low, stumpy pine ridges in haphazard fashion, like a Swiss village. A small brook ran through it, smothered here and there in snow. A sawmill was the largest figure of the town, and the railway station was the centre. There was not an inch of painted board in the village. Everywhere the clear yellow of the pine flamed unstained by time. Lumber piles filled all the lower levels near the creek. Evidently the town had been built along logging roads, and there was something grateful and admirable in its irregular arrangement. The houses, moreover, were all modifications of the logging camps; even the drug store stood with its side to the street. All about were stumps and fringes of pines, which the lumbermen, for some good reason, had passed by. Charred boles stood purple-black out of the snow. It was all green and gray and blue and yellow-white and stern. The sky was not more illimitable than the rugged forest which extended on every hand. "Oh, this is glorious--glorious!" said the wife. "Do I own some of this town?" she asked, as they rose to go out. "I reckon you do." "Oh, I'm so glad!" As they stepped out on the platform, a large man in corduroy and wolf-skin faced them like a bandit. "Hello, Ed!" "Hello, Jack! Well, we've found you. My wife, Mr. Ridgeley. We've come up to find out how much you've embezzled," he said, as Ridgeley pulled off an immense glove to shake hands all round. "Well, come right over to the hotel. It ain't the Auditorium, but then, again, it ain't like sleeping outdoors." As they moved along they heard the train go off, and then the sound of the saw resumed its domination of the village noises. "Was the town named after you, or you after the town?" asked Field. "Named after me. Old man didn't want it named after him; would kill it," he said. Mr. and Mrs. Field found the hotel quite comfortable and the dinner wholesome. They beamed upon each other. "It's going to be delightful," they said. Ridgeley was a bachelor, and made his home at the hotel also. That night he said: "Now we'll go over the papers and records of your uncle's property, and then we'll go out and see if the property is all there. I imagine this is to be a searching investigation." "You may well think it. My wife is inexorable." As night fell, the wife did not feel so safe and well pleased. The loud talking in the office below and the occasional whooping of a crowd of mill-hands going by made her draw her chair nearer and lay her fingers in her husband's palm. He smiled indulgently. "Don't be frightened, my dear. These men are not half so bad as they sound." II