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“Why didn’t you get into the basket?”

“How could I, with you on my manly bosom?”

She colored up a little. They had not been married long, evidently. “How considerate you are!”

They were soon eating a breakfast with the spirit of picnickers. Occasionally she looked out of the window.

“What a wild country!” she said. He did not emphasize its qualities to her; rather, he distracted her attention from its desolation.

The train roared round its curves, conforming with the general course of the river. On every hand were thickening signs of active lumber industry. They flashed by freight trains loaded with logs or lumber or ties. Mills in operation grew thicker.

The car echoed with the talk of lumber. A brisk man with a red mustache was exhibiting a model of a machine to cut certain parts of machinery out of “two by fours.” Another was describing a new shingle-mill he had just built.

A couple of elderly men, one a German, were discussing the tariff on lumber. The workmen mainly sat silent.

“It’s all so strange!” the young wife said, again and again.

“Yes, it isn’t exactly the Lake Shore Drive.”

“I like it. I wish I could smell the pines.”

“You’ll have all the pines you can stand before we get back to Chicago.”

“No, sir; I’m going to enjoy every moment of it; and you’re going to let me help, you know–look over papers, and all that. I’m the heiress, you must remember,” she added, wickedly.

“Well, we won’t quarrel about that until we see how the legacy turns out. It may not be worth my time up here. I shall charge you roundly as your lawyer, depend on that.”

The outlook grew more attractive as the train sped on. Old Mosinee rose, a fine rounded blue shape, on the left.

“Why, there’s a mountain! I didn’t know Wisconsin had such a mountain as that.”

“Neither did I. This valley is fine. Now, if your uncle’s estates only included that hill!”

The valley made off to the northwest with a bold, large, and dignified movement. The coloring, blue and silver, purple-brown and bronze-green, was harmonious with the grouping of lines. It was all fresh and vital, wholesome and very impressive.

From this point the land grew wilder–that is to say, more primeval. There was more of Nature and less of man. The scar of the axe was here and there, but the forest predominated. The ridges of pine foliages broke against the sky, miles and miles, in splendid sweep.

“This must be lovely in summer,” the wife said, again and again, as they flashed by some lake set among the hills.

“It’s fine now,” he replied, feeling the thrill of the sportsman. “I’d like to shoulder a rifle and plunge into those snowy vistas. How it brings the wild spirit out in a man! Women never feel that delight.”

“Oh, yes, we do,” she replied, glad that something remained yet unexplained between them. “We feel just like men, only we haven’t the strength of mind to demand a share of it with you.”

“Yes, you feel it at this distance. You’d come back mighty quick the second night out.”

She did not relish his laughter, and so looked away out of the window. “Just think of it–Uncle Edwin lived here thirty years!”

He forebore to notice her inconsistency. “Yes, the wilderness is all right for a vacation, but I prefer Chicago for the year round.”

When they came upon Ridgeley, both cried out with delight.

“Oh, what a dear, picturesque little town!” she said.

“Well, well! I wonder how they came to build a town without a row of battlemented stores?”

It lay among and upon the sharp, low, stumpy pine ridges in haphazard fashion, like a Swiss village. A small brook ran through it, smothered here and there in snow. A sawmill was the largest figure of the town, and the railway station was the centre. There was not an inch of painted board in the village. Everywhere the clear yellow of the pine flamed unstained by time. Lumber piles filled all the lower levels near the creek. Evidently the town had been built along logging roads, and there was something grateful and admirable in its irregular arrangement. The houses, moreover, were all modifications of the logging camps; even the drug store stood with its side to the street. All about were stumps and fringes of pines, which the lumbermen, for some good reason, had passed by. Charred boles stood purple-black out of the snow.