GRENFELL'S MINE It was Saturday evening, and Weston sat on a ledge of the hillside above the silent construction camp, endeavoring to mend a pair of duck trousers that had been badly torn in the bush.

He held several strips of a cotton flour-bag in one hand, and was considering how he could best make use of them without unduly displaying the bold lettering of the brand, though in the bush of that country it was not an unusual thing for a man to go about labeled "Early Riser," or somebody's "Excelsior." His companions had trooped off to the settlement about a league away, and a row of flat cars stood idle on the track which now led across the beaten muskeg.

On the farther side of the latter, the tall pines lay strewn in rows, but beyond the strip of clearing the bush closed in again, solemn, shadowy, and almost impenetrable.

There was a smell of resinous wood-smoke in the air, but save for the distant sound of the river everything was very still.
Weston looked up sharply as a patter of approaching footsteps rose out of the shadows behind him.

Some of the men were evidently coming back from the settlement earlier than he had expected.