“You are so scornful about the other men, now you have chosen one!” Christine's face turned red. “Why, Chrissy! You would not compare your brother to those men! Papa, I beg your pardon; this is only for argument.” “I don't compare him; but that's not to say all the other men are chaff!” Christine joined constrainedly in the laugh that followed her speech. “You need not go fancying things, Moya,” she cried, in answer to a quizzical look. “As if I hadn't known the Bowen boys since I was so high!” “You might know them from the cradle to the grave, my dear young lady, and not know them as Paul will, after a week in the woods with them.” The colonel had missed the drift of the girls' discussion. He was considering, privately, whether he had not better send a special messenger on the young men's trail. His assurances to the women left a wide margin for personal doubt as to the prudence of the trip. Aside from the lateness of the start, it was, undoubtedly, an ill-assorted company for the woods. There was a wide margin also for suspense, as all mail facilities ceased at Challis. VIII A HUNTER'S DIARY Early in November, about a week before the hunters were expected home, a packet came addressed to Moya. It was a journal letter from Paul, mailed by some returning prospector chance encountered in the forest as the party were going in. Moya read it aloud, with asterisks, to a family audience which did not include her father. “To-day,” one of the first entries read, “we halt at Twelve-Mile Cabin, the last roof we shall sleep under. There are pine-trees near the cabin cut off fifteen feet above the ground, felled in winter, John tells us, _at the level of the snow!_