ignore the beauty of the canyon through which he travelled. Within reach of his hand Hunter’s rock leek was blooming. There were ferns and mosses; there were red larkspur and lavender, blue, and yellow lupin and the red of pentstemon and many yellows, and one little pool filled with the pearl-white of blooming lizard’s-tail with its rank foliage, its attractive flowers. None of these Jamie knew, for none had been included in his study of botany in the East.
On and on Jamie went down the canyon. How slowly he went he did not realize himself, but by and by he began to see people. Then he knew that he had been right when he thought he heard voices. There were places where smoke ascended and suddenly and joyfully Jamie felt his problem for the remainder of that day solved. All he had to do was to wait until the picnickers left the canyon and then he would search where they had been and gather up the dry wood of dead branches and twigs that they had collected or that had fallen, and in one of the places where they had been cooking he would make a fire so big and warm that he could spend the night in comfort. So he sat down and waited until the sounds of the canyon had been reduced to bird notes and falling water, running water, laughing water, singing water. Then he began picking up everything big enough to burn and in the crook of his left arm he stacked it as he went along, until he had as big a load as he could carry. Presently he found a cavern of stone in a side wall of the stream where people had been cooking, and far back in the ashes, over which
