XVI
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T first the way, lying through waist-high fir scrub, was pretty bad underfoot, but beyond was a stretch of fine timber, where the trees had done much to arrest the snow, and the going was not so severe. Aladdin calculated that he should make the distance in an hour and a half; and when the wood ended, he looked at his watch and found that the first mile, together with only twenty-five minutes, was behind him.
"That's the rate of an hour and a quarter, Troubles," he said. "And that's good time. Are you listening?"
But following the wood was a great open space of country pitched up from the surrounding levels, and naked to every fury of nature. Across that upland the
