o get a light," he said.

He pushed through the willows growing beside the creek, but dropped his
matchbox, and Pete came to help him in the search. They found it, but
before he could strike a match a man stopped at the end of the bridge
and looked back up the street. Foster, imagining he was the fellow who
had spoken to him at the hotel, touched Pete, and they stood very still.

The man might have seen them had he glanced their way, although the
branches broke the outline of their figures, but he was looking back,
as if he expected somebody to come up behind, and after a few moments
went on again. He crossed the clearing towards a fence that seemed to
indicate a road following the edge of the forest, and vanished into the
gloom of the trees. Then, as Foster lighted his pipe, another man came
quickly across the bridge and took the same direction as the first.

"I wunner if yon was what ye might ca' a coincidence," Pete said softly.

"So do I, but don't see how it concerns us," Foster replied. "I think
we'll take the road straight in front."

They followed a track that led through the bush at a right angle to the
other. The snow was beaten firm as if by the passage of logs or
sledges, and there were broad gaps among the trees, which rose in
ragged spires, sprinkled with clinging snow. In places, the track
glittered in the moonlight, but, for the most part, one side was marked
by a belt of gray shadow. After a time, they heard a branch spring
back; then there was a crackle of undergrowth, and a man came out of an
opening ahead. It was the man who had first passed them; Foster knew
him by his rather short fur coat. For no obvious reason and
half-instinctively, he drew back into the gloom. The man did not see
them and went on up the track.

"Yon's a weel-kent trick in my trade," Pete remarked. "When it's no'
convenient to be followed, ye send an inquisitive pairson off on
anither road. But I would like to see if he has got rid o' the ither
fellow."

They waited some minutes, but nobody else appeared, and Foster surmised
that the first man knew the ground and the other did not. The fellow
had vanished among the trees, but after a time they saw him again,
crossing a belt of moonlight some distance in front, and Foster felt he
must find out where he was going.

By and by the indistinct figure vanished again, and pushing on
cautiously through the shadow, they came to a clearing at the foot of
the range.