Sunday morning was still stormy, but before noon the rain ceased, and
Duncan announced his intention of starting homeward at once. We
raised our flags and exchanged our farewells and Godspeeds with him.
Then he left us, and as be disappeared down the trail a strange sense
of loneliness came upon us, for it seemed to us that his going broke
the last link that connected us with the outside world. Duncan was
always so cheerful, with his quaint humor, and so ready to do his work
to the very best of his ability, that we missed him very much, and
often spoke of him in the days that followed.

We had made the best of our enforced idleness in this camp to repack
and condense and dry our outfit as much as possible. The venison, at
the first imperfectly cured, had been so continuously soaked that the
most of what remained of it was badly spoiled and we could not use it,
and with regret we threw it away. The erbswurst was also damp, and
this we put into small canvas bags, which were then placed near the
stove to dry.

A rising barometer augured good weather for Monday morning. A light
wind scattered the clouds that had for so many days entombed the world
in storm and gloom, and the sun broke out gloriously, setting the
moisture-laden trees aglinting as though hung with a million pearls
and warming the damp fir trees until the air was laden with the forest
perfume. It was as though a pall had been lifted from the world. How
our hearts swelled with the new enthusiasm of the returned sunshine!
It was always so. It seemed as if the long-continued storms bound up
our hearts and crushed the buoyancy from them; but the returning
sunshine melted the bonds at once and gave us new ambition. A robin
sang gayly from a near-by tree--a messenger from the kindlier
Southland come to cheer us--and the "whisky jacks," who had not shown