The Mate of the Vancouver — page 154: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

142 ‘THE MATE OF THE VANCOUVER. bones and hide together. Besides, I foel more freer down here. I see more than ‘ull d¢ me of the hills walking the line.” And with that we came to his -amp. Now, if I tell all that happened duriag thac winter, which was, all round, the most uncot.fortable and most unhappy one I ever spent, for J had so much. time to think of Elsie, and how some other rian more to her mind might go to windward of me in court- ing her—why, I shouic not write one book, ‘ e but two, which is not my intention now. a Besides, 1 have been long enough coming to - x the most serious part of my history to tire | | other people, as it has tired me; although iy I could not exactly help it, because all, or at CEE ce Ls a ee ee ese least nearly all, that happened between the | ‘i time I was on the Vaxcowver and the time we y all met again seems important to me, especisily : aa it might have gone very differently if I- had a never been gold-hunting in the Selkirke, or . even if I had got out of the mountains in the