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Rh Every one of them was eager to prove herself worthy of following in the trail that Bord Mathewson broke for them over what to him must have been toy mountains. For he always broke trail for the Bartlett party when he was one of them in a day's tramp. He wasn't always one of them, however. Even with such proficient snow-shoers as Ollie Bartlett, Fairlee Ormsbee and Nina Borst, Bord Mathewson and one of the more experienced of the men usually went off by themselves to climb something real, they said.

When Edna came down-stairs in the morning, she found that the women were dressed in mannish Oxford coats and knickerbockers to match—not bloomers, but frankly and undisguisedly knickerbockers, made of rough, tweedy stuff of nondescript color, buttoned trimly at the knee. And she had demurred over a twelve-inch skirt! As she followed the members of the Bartlett party out of the dining-room that morning she felt as if she were the only female creature among them. Well, she must make the best of it. She mustn't allow clothes to interrupt—a triviality like that!

When the women appeared on the hotel veranda, half an hour after breakfast, equipped for the morning's tramp in brown canvas, multi-pocketed hunting jackets, tin drinking-cups strapped about their waists, feet buried in roomy,