This did not strike me at the time as anything more
than natural. It did later.
Within a couple of weeks I reached Viking, a lumbering town with great
saw-mills, by way of San Francisco and Vancouver. Roscoe met me at the
coach, and I was taken at once to the house among the hills. It stood on
the edge of a ravine, and the end of the verandah looked over a verdant
precipice, beautiful but terrible too. It was uniquely situated; a nest
among the hills, suitable either for work or play. In one's ears was the
low, continuous din of the rapids, with the music of a neighbouring
waterfall.
On the way up the hills I had a chance to observe Roscoe closely. His
face had not that sturdy buoyancy which his letter suggested. Still, if
it was pale, it had a glow which it did not possess before, and even a
stronger humanity than of old. A new look had come into his eyes, a
certain absorbing earnestness, refining the past asceticism. A more
amiable and unselfish comrade man never had.
The second day I was there he took me to call upon a family at Viking,
the town with a great saw-mill and two smaller ones, owned by James
Devlin, an enterprising man who had grown rich at lumbering, and who
lived here in the mountains many months in each year.
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