impatience of the machinery, he added hesitatingly, "I fancy I've
wandered off the track a bit. Do you know a Mr. Bradley--somewhere
here?"

The stranger's hesitation seemed to be more from some habitual
conscientiousness of statement than awkwardness. The man in the window
replied, "I'm Bradley."

"Ah! Thank you: I've a letter for you--somewhere. Here it is." He
produced a note from his breast-pocket. Bradley stooped to a sitting
posture in the window. "Pitch it up." It was thrown and caught cleverly.
Bradley opened it, read it hastily, smiled and nodded, glanced behind
him as if to implore further delay from the impatient machinery, leaned
perilously from the window, and said,--

"Look here! Do you see that silver-fir straight ahead?"

"Yes."

"A little to the left there's a trail. Follow it and skirt along the
edge of the canyon until you see my house. Ask for my wife--that's Mrs.
Bradley--and give her your letter. Stop!" He drew a carpenter's pencil
from his pocket, scrawled two or three words across the open sheet
and tossed it back to the stranger. "See you at tea! Excuse me--Mr.
Mainwaring--we're short-handed--and--the engine--" But here he
disappeared suddenly.

Without glancing at the note again, the stranger quietly replaced it
in his pocket, and struck out across the fallen trunks towards the
silver-fir. He quickly found the trail indicated by Bradley, although it