It was more curious that he understood all he read, and sometimes more than the writer apparently did, for Alton was not only the son of a clever man, but had seen Nature in her primitive nakedness and the human passions that usually lie beneath the surface, for man reverts a little and the veneer of his civilization wears through in the silent bush.
Thus he plodded on contentedly on his twelve-mile march, with the snow and the mire beneath it reaching now and then to his knee, until his companion stopped beside a little bark shanty and lighted a lantern.
"Thomson's dumping-place already," he said, pulling a burst cotton bag out of the sack of sundries upon the Cayuse pony's back.

"Some of it has got out, and Jimmy was always particular about the weight of his sugar.

Well, the rest of it must be in the bottom somewhere, and if you'll hold the sack up I'll shake it into my hat." Alton's hat was capacious, and he had worn it during the two years which had elapsed since his last visit to Vancouver, but it did not seem to occur to him that it was in any way an unusual receptacle for sugar.

His companion, however, laughed a little as he stirred the sticky mass round with his wet fingers.
"There is no use giving him our tobacco and matches in," said he.
"Here are the letters Mrs.Neilson gave me at the post-office, too." Alton took the letters, and his face grew a trifle grim under the flickering light of the lantern as he thrust them crumpled into his pocket.

"From England, and they will keep," he said.