CHAPTER XXV
ALTON IS SILENT
There is a ridge of rising ground on the outskirts of Vancouver City where a few years ago a pretty wooden house stood beneath the pines. They rose sombrely behind it, but the axe had let in the sunlight between the rise and the water, and one could look out from the trim garden across the blue inlet towards the ranges' snow. To-day one would in all probability look for that dwelling in vain, and find only stores or great stone buildings, for as the silent men with the axes push the lonely clearings farther back into the forest the Western cities grow, and those who dwell in them increase in riches, which is not usually the case with the axeman who goes on farther into the bush again.
Still, one moonlight evening, when Alton waited upon its verandah, cigar
