It was one of those wonderful Canadian winter days, bright, and with a touch of sharpness in the air that did not chill, but warmed the blood like draughts of wine. The men were up in the woods, and the shrill scream of the blue jay flashing across the open, the impudent chatter of the red squirrel from the top of the grub camp, and the pert chirp of the whisky-jack, hopping about on the rubbish-heap, with the long, lone cry of the wolf far down the valley, only made the silence felt the more.
As I stood drinking in with all my soul the glorious beauty and the silence of mountain and forest, with the Christmas feeling stealing into me, Graeme came out from his office, and, catching sight of me, called out, ‘Glorious Christmas weather, old chap!’ And then, coming nearer, ‘Must you go to-morrow?’
‘I fear so,’ I replied, knowing well that the Christmas feeling was on him too.
‘I wish I were going with you,’ he said quietly.
I turned eagerly to persuade him, but at the look of suffering in his face the words died at my lips, for we both were thinking of the awful night of horror when all his bright, brilliant life crashed down about him in black ruin and shame. I could only throw my arm over his shoulder and stand silent beside him. A sudden jingle of bells roused him, and, giving himself a little shake, he exclaimed, ‘There are the boys coming home.’
Soon the camp was filled with men talking, laughing, chaffing, like light-hearted boys.
‘They are a little wild to-night,’ said Graeme; ‘and to morrow they’ll paint Black Rock red.’
Before many minutes had gone, the last teamster was ‘washed up,’ and all were standing about waiting impatiently for the cook’s signal—the supper to-night was to be ‘something of a feed’—when the sound of bells drew their attention to a light sleigh drawn by a buckskin broncho coming down the hillside at a great pace.
‘The preacher, I’ll bet, by his driving,’ said one of the men.
‘Bedad, and it’s him has the foine nose for turkey!’ said Blaney, a good-natured, jovial Irishman.