IN THE WILDERNESS Dusk was closing down on the valley, and the rain had ceased, when Alton unstrapped his load, and stood with aching shoulders amidst the dripping pines.

He could hear the rattle of the twigs that met and brushed through the shrill wailing of the wind about the sombre spires that pierced the growing darkness far above him, and the harmonic murmuring that rose and fell in cadence along the dim, vaulted roof.
There was, however, nothing else beyond the growl of a rapid somewhere up the valley, and stretching out his arms wearily, he stooped with a little smile that was grim rather than mirthful and caught up the axe.
Now one can usually hear the thudding of the axe a mile or more in the stillness of the woods that is not silence to the bushman's ear.

Their voice is always musical, and the sounds that man makes jar through its harmonies, but only a forest rancher or free prospector would have caught the muffled sound, that was lost in the song of the pines a few score yards from Alton's camp.

He knew where to find the resinous knots with their sticky exudations, and was a master of the axe, while it was noticeable that when the fire commenced to crackle he stood still and listened again before he went down to the river with the kettle.

Nor did he at once return into the light, but slipped for a moment behind a wide-girthed trunk.