of broken stone were tumbled in ruinous confusion--through
everything he pushed forward. I could see, here and there, the
track of his former journeys: broken branches of witch-hazel and
moose-wood, ferns trampled down, a faint trail across some
deeper bed of moss. At mid-day we rested for a half-hour to
eat lunch. But Keene would eat nothing, except a little
pellet of some dark green substance that he took from a flat
silver box in his pocket. He swallowed it hastily, and
stooping his face to the spring by which he had halted, drank
long and eagerly.

"An Indian trick," said he, shaking the drops of water
from his face. "On a walk, food is a hindrance, a delay. But
this tiny taste of bitter gum is a tonic; it spurs the courage
and doubles the strength--if you are used to it. Otherwise I
should not recommend you to try it. Faugh! the flavour is vile."

He rinsed his mouth again with water, and stood up,
calling me to come on. The way, now tangled among the
nameless peaks and ranges, bore steadily southward, rising all
the time, in spite of many brief downward curves where a steep
gorge must be crossed. Presently we came into a hard-wood
forest, open and easy to travel. Breasting a long slope, we
reached the summit of a broad, smoothly rounding ridge covered
with a dense growth of stunted spruce. The trees rose above
our heads, about twice the height of a man, and so thick that
we could not see beyond them. But, from glimpses here and
there, and from the purity and lightness of the air, I judged
that we were on far higher ground than any we had yet
traversed, the central comb, perhaps, of the mountain-system.