"Why, there's a mountain! I didn't know Wisconsin had such a mountain as that." "Neither did I. This valley is fine. Now, if your uncle's estates only included that hill!" The valley made off to the northwest with a bold, large, and dignified movement. The coloring, blue and silver, purple-brown and bronze-green, was suitable to the grouping of lines. It was all fresh and vital, wholesome and very impressive. From this point the land grew wilder--that is, more primeval: There was more of Nature and less of man. The scar of the axe was here and there, but the forest predominated. The ridges of pine foliages broke against the sky miles and miles in splendid sweep. "This must be lovely in summer," the wife said, again and again, as they flashed by some lake set among the hills. "It's fine now," he replied, feeling the thrill of the sportsman. "I'd like to shoulder a rifle and plunge into those snowy vistas. How it brings the wild spirit out in a man! Women never feel that delight." "Oh, yes, we do," she replied, glad that something remained yet unexplained between them. "We feel just like men, only we haven't the strength of mind to demand a share of it with you." "Yes, you feel it at this distance. You'd come back mighty quick the second night out." She did not relish his laughter, and so looked away out of the window. "Just think of it--Uncle Edwin lived here thirty years!" He forbore 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 center. 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 wild. 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.