304 THE BED MOUNTAIN OF ALASKA. 
Two hours later, the men appeared once more, some 
staggering under huge logs, some with axes, some with 
bundles of lighter boughs for kindling. In another five 
minutes, smoke was going up cheerily from the whole line 
of cars. 
When Bob Estabrook stamped into his own car, hug- 
ging up a big armful of wood, he was a different-looking 
fellow from the trim, young lawyer who was wont to 
stand before the jury seats in the Boston court-house. 
He had on a pair of immense blue-yarn mittens loaned by 
a kindly brakeman, his face was scratched with refractory 
twigs, his eyebrows were frosted, his mustache an icy 
caret, two finger-tips frozen, and, with all this, he looked 
and felt more manly than ever before in his life. 
His eye roved through the length of the car, as it had 
that first night in the depot. She was not there. He 
was as anxious as a boy for her praise. 
" Guess I'll take it into the next car," he said, apolo- 
getically, to the nearest passenger ; " there's more coming, 
just behind." 
She was not in the second Pullman. Of course, 'she 
wasn't in the baggage-car. Was it possible — ? He en- 
tered the third and last car, recoiling just a bit at the 
odor of crowded and unclean poverty which met him at 
the door. 
Sure enough, there she sat — his idle, fashionable type 
of inutility — with one frowzy child upon the seat beside 
her, two very rumpled-looking boys in front, and in her 
