"He is a tolerably useful man in this country, anyway, and that kind of contented me." The lady shook her head at him reproachfully.

"And I thought you were slow in the bush," said she.

"Still, Thorne will know." Alton fancied his hostess intended to be kind to him, but he was glad when the dinner was over and he gravitated with the other men towards Forel's smoking-room.

There, as it happened, the talk turned upon shooting and fishing, and when one or two of the guests had narrated their adventures in the ranges, one who was bent and grizzled told in turn several grim stories of the early days when the treasure-seekers went up into the snows of Caribou.

There was a brief silence when he had finished, until one of the Englishmen said: "I presume things of that kind seldom happen now ?" "I don't know," said Seaforth, who spoke in the Western idiom.