with queer smells as well as sights and sounds, therefore we only
complimented Ned on being provident enough to make a good stock of
candles before-hand, for home consumption, during the coming dark
days. After we had dismounted and hobbled our horses with the
stirrup leathers, so that they could move about and nibble the sweet
blue grass growing under each sheltering tussock, I sat down on a
large stone near, and began to tell Ned how often I had watched the
negroes in Jamaica making candles after a similar fashion, only they
use the wax from the wild bee nests instead of tallow, which was a
rare and scarce thing in that part of the world. I described to him
the thick orange-coloured wax candles which used to be the delight
of my childhood, giving out a peculiar perfuming odour after they
had been burning for an hour or two,--an odour made up of honey and
the scent of heavy tropic flowers.

Ned listened to my little story with much politeness, and then,
feeling it incumbent on him to contribute to the conversation,
remarked, "I never makes candles ma'am without I thinks of
frost-bites."

"How is that, Palmer?" I asked, laughingly. "What in the world have
they to do with each other?"

"Well, ma'am, you see it was just in this way. It was afore I come
here, which is quite a lively, sociable place compared to Dodson's
back country out-station, at the foot o' those there ranges beyond.
I give you my word, ma'am, it used always to make me feel as if I
was dead, and living in a lonely eternity. Them clear, bright-blue
_glassers_ (glaciers, he meant, I presume) was awful lonesome, and
as for a human being they never come a-nigh the place. Well as I