“No, sir. We didn’t even see one,” said Weston; and again he noticed Miss Stirling’s smile.

“Well,” said Kinnaird, “we are breaking camp tomorrow, and my idea is that Mrs. Kinnaird should go on with the baggage in the canoes. The rest of us will follow the bench, and after working around the head of the big spur yonder come down again to the water by the other slope. You are, of course, willing to make the ascent with us?”

“I am under your orders,” said Weston. “Still, I shouldn’t advise it.”

“Why?”

It was rather difficult to answer. Weston could not tell the major that he considered him a little too old for that work, or that he was dubious about his daughter’s stamina and courage. He had seen self-confident strangers come down from those mountains dressed in rags, with their boots torn off their bleeding feet. Besides, he felt reasonably sure that, as he was not a professional guide, any advice that he might feel it wise to offer would not be heeded.

“I have heard that there is thick timber on the other slope,” he said. “It’s generally rather bad to get through.”

Kinnaird, who never had been in really thick timber, dismissed the matter with a smile.

“We will start at six to-morrow, and endeavor to get down to camp again on the other side in the afternoon. You will arrange about provisions.”

Weston said that he would do so, but he was not exactly pleased when he watched the major climb the hillside immediately behind them, with his glasses, to plot out the route. It seemed very probable that once he had fixed on one he would adhere to it at any cost, and, perhaps, the more persistently if the course in question appeared inadvisable to his companions. Weston did not pretend to be a great judge of character, but Kinnaird, who, it seemed, had held command in India, struck him as that kind of man. His wife was a little, placid lady, whose bodily vigor and any resolution of character she might once have possessed had apparently evaporated under the Indian sun, and, as far as Weston had noticed, she invariably agreed with whatever was said. When he waited on them at supper their talk was of the easier ascents in Switzerland, and in the mountains of his own land, whose names rang like music in his ears—the Striding Edge, the Great Gable Needle, and Saddleback Crags. The Needle was certainly difficult to climb, but the Striding Edge on a still day was a secure promenade compared with some of the ledges along which he had seen western prospectors struggle with a month’s supplies.

Supper, which as usual was prepared about six o’clock, had been over an hour or two, when, after waiting for an opportunity, he found Ida alone beside the lake.