The miner, who was diffident, and who, furthermore, spoke in mountain phrase and with a queer stutter, tried to say that he really did know of one such case, and the Colonel forced him to tell the story. Translated into English--for it was with difficulty that the miner was understood, and the Colonel, who was familiar with the account, gave most of it--this is the story of what happened to a man and wife, not altogether tenderfeet, in the hills, and what was accomplished by THE LIFE LINE Robert Felton was in luck when he met an Eastern girl in Salt Lake City. He was from Chicago and she from Boston. An inveterate sportsman was Felton and each autumn when he came out to visit a mine in which he was interested the trip terminated with a hunting expedition which extended sometimes to the very edge of the time of storms and snow. Once or twice he and his companions had been nearly caught snowbound in the mountains and he had acquired experience, not perhaps sufficient. He met a tall bronze-haired, gray-eyed Catherine Murdoch who was on a visit from the East--and that settled it. He fell in love a thousand feet and wooed with all the vigor and persistency he might have exhibited after elk or bear. It didn't take long. The splendid advance of the tempestuous hunter-miner, business man, as cultivated as she too, somehow fascinated the frigid beauty and she yielded in almost no time. They met in June, were married in September and spent the winter and spring and summer in Chicago. Then, with approaching autumn, came again upon Felton the mountain fever, and he proposed the usual Western trip. He was in love as deeply as ever and he was a considerate man. "We'll go to Salt Lake City," he said, "and I'll attend to my business--it's all in town there--and then, dear, you'll let me make a hunting trip, won't you, while you stay in the city and have a good time with Mary." Mary was Mrs. Felton's cousin. "Where do you hunt, Bob?" inquired Mrs. Felton. "Oh, generally away up a canyon which forks from one where a couple of my friends have a mine. I've had a sort of shack built away up on the side of this branch canyon, which is about five miles across country from the mine, and, every fall, they send over a stock of provisions--canned goods and flour, and sugar and tea and coffee--and come over themselves when they can and hunt and fish with me. It will be a little late this year." "What sort of a place is this shack of yours?" "It's fine. There are a cook stove and table and three chairs and a bed. There's a window, too, and there's a lithograph of Li Hung Chang tacked up on the wall. It's just voluptuous--makes you think of the Taj Mahal on the outside and the boudoir of a Sultan's favorite in the inside. It's a dream." "Bob, I'm not going to stay in Salt Lake City. I'm going hunting with you." "What?" The tone of the lady became just a shade pleading: "Why not, Bob?"