e hurried
around the old cabin, his eyes close to the earth. When Rod and Wabi
returned to the door he was at the edge of the fall, crouching low
among the rocks like an animal seeking a trail. Wabi pulled his
companion back.

"Look!"

The old warrior rose, suddenly erect, and turned toward them, but the
boys were hidden in the gloom. Then he hurried to the dead stub beside
the chasm wall. Again he reached far up, rubbing his hand along its
surface.

"I'm going to have a look at that tree!" whispered Wabi. "Something is
puzzling Are you coming?"

He hurried across the rock-strewn opening, but Rod hung back. He could
not understand his companions. For weeks and months they had planned
to find this third waterfall. Visions of a great treasure had been
constantly before their eyes, and now that they were here, with the
gold perhaps under their very feet, both Mukoki and Wabigoon were more
interested in a dead stub than in their search for it! His own heart
was almost bursting with excitement. The very air which he breathed
in the old cabin set his blood leaping with anticipation. Here those
earlier adventurers had lived half a century or more ago. In it the
life-blood of the murdered John Ball might have ebbed away. In this
cabin the men whose skeletons he had found had slept, and planned, and
measured their gold. And the gold! It was that and not the stub that
interested Roderick Drew! Where was the lost treasure? Surely the old
cabin must hold some clue for them, it would at least tell them more
than the limbless white corpse of a tree!

From the door he looked back into the dank gloom, straining his eyes
to see, and then glanced across the opening. Wabi had reached the
stub, and both he and Mukoki were on their knees beside it. Probably
they have found the marks of a lynx or a bear, thought Rod. A dozen
paces away something else caught his eyes, a fallen red pine, dry and
heavy with pitch, and in less than a minute he had gone to it and was
back with a torch. Breathlessly he touched the tiny flame of a match
to the stick. For a moment the pitch sputtered and hissed, then flared
into light, and Rod held the burning wood above his head.

The young gold seeker's first look about him was disappointing.
Nothing but the bare walls met his eyes. Then, in the farthest corner,
he observed something that in the dancing torch-light was darker than
the logs themselves, and he moved toward it. It was a tiny shelf, not
more