Sombre clouds rolled lower down the surrounding hills, and Seaforth was glad to stretch his weary limbs under the lee of a big boulder while the fire snapped and crackled in front of him.
"I wonder when we shall see this lake again," he said.
Alton, who was busy with the frypan, turned and stirred the fire, and the sparks and smoke whirled about them before a stinging blast.

"I don't know," he said, glancing at a smear of whiteness that swept athwart the lake.

"It depends upon the weather, and I'm not pleased with that to-night.

You see the Chinook winds would keep off the snow." "Of course," said Seaforth, who knew that the warm breezes from the Pacific occasionally drive back the rigorous winter that turns the northern portion of the mountain province into a white desolation.
"They usually do, but we'll surmise that in place of them we get the back-draughts from the Pole ?" "Then," said Alton dryly, "it would be a good deal nicer down at Somasco.

Are you sorry you didn't stop there, Charley ?" Seaforth threw an armful of fir wood upon the fire with somewhat unnecessary violence.