"Yes, I saw them both in Olympia the day before yesterday. In fact your sister made me the bearer of a good many messages to you. I wish I could remember them all. But, most important, she is coming out, herself, to see you within a week. The Captain is getting an outfit together for a trip to Mt. Rainier, and he hopes, if you can arrange for a short vacation, to take you and Mrs. Kingsley as far, at least, as the warm springs." "Oh," she said, and the coolness dropped from her face like a broken mask, "it will be lovely. Lovely. I knew he would let me go. And I can arrange a week of vacation; the directors have been considering it, for the older boys are needed through harvest." "Then," he said, and his own face seemed to catch and reflect the light in hers, "I am doubly glad that the Captain has asked me to complete the party." Her position on the edge of the platform brought her eyes almost on a level with his, and she met his look for a steady, searching, questioning instant. "Lem is waiting for me at the creek," she said, and went down and took her hat from its peg on the wall. *CHAPTER VI* *MOSE* Yelm Jim sat brooding in his lodge. He was wrapped in his blanket and an old campaign hat shaded his eyes from the fire, which was kindled on the packed earth floor, and found partial vent through an opening in the roof, around which hung haunches of drying venison and bear. The squaw Clak-la-sum-kah was cooking bread, an unleavened mixture of flour and water, in a frying-pan over the coals. At the same time she watched some fine trout, which were suspended from a rod set in forked stakes above the embers. Mose, who had caught these fish, lounged on a couch that, built of shakes, extended along three sides of the room, and was furnished with woven mats of ribbon grass or the bast of cedar. The wall behind him also was covered with this fabric, which was of the color of ripened maize.