between the mountains gave warning that in this
mysterious world of the ancient cabin the dusk of night was not far
away. But not until they could no longer see the gleaming mica in
their pans did the three cease work. Wet to the waist, tired, and with
sadly-shattered dreams they returned to their camp. For a short time
Rod's hopes were at their lowest ebb. Was it possible that there was
no more gold, that the three adventurers of long ago had discovered a
"pocket" here, and worked it out? The thought had been growing in his
head. Now it worried him.

But his depression did not last long. The big fire which Mukoki
built and the stimulating aroma of strong coffee revived his natural
spirits, and both Wabi and he were soon laughing and planning again as
they made their cedar-bough shelter. Supper on the big flat stone--a
feast of bear steak, hot-stone biscuits, coffee, and that most
delectable of all wilderness luxuries, a potato apiece,--and the two
irrepressible young gold hunters were once more scheming and building
their air-castles for the following day. Mukoki listened, and attended
to the clothes drying before the fire, now and then walking out into
the gloom of the chasm to look up to where the white rim of the fall
burst over the edge of the great rock above them. All that afternoon
Wabi and Rod had forgotten the mad hunter and the strange, smoothly
worn tree. Mukoki had not.

In the glow of the camp-fire the two boys read over again the old
account of John Ball and the two Frenchmen. The tiny slip of paper,
yellow with age, was the connecting link between them and the dim
and romantic past, a relic of the grim tragedy which these black and
gloomy chasm walls would probably keep for ever a secret.

"Twenty-seven pounds," repeated Rod, as if half to himself. "That was
one month's work!"

"Pretty nearly a pound a day!" gasped Wabi. "I tell you, Rod, we
haven't hit the right spot--yet!"

"I wonder why John Ball's share was twice that of his companions'? Do
you suppose it was because he discovered the gold in the first place?"
speculated Rod.

"In all probability it was. That accounts for his murder. The
Frenchmen were getting the small end of the deal."

"Eighteen hundred fifty-nine," mused Rod. "That was forty-nine years
ago, before the great Civil War. Say--"

He stopped and looked hard at Wabigoon.

"Did it ever strike you that John Ball might not have been murdered?"

Wabi leaned forward with more t