en had discovered, and that once he went to a great city, which
must have been Montreal, and that he stayed there a long time doing
something for the Hudson Bay Company, and met a girl whom he married.
When he spoke of the girl John Ball's eyes would glow feverishly and
her name would fall from him in a moaning sob. For as yet returning
reason had not placed the hand of age upon him. It was as if he was
awakening from a deep sleep, and Dolores, his young wife, had been
with him but a few hours before.

There came another break in John Ball's life after this. He could not
remember how, long they lived in Montreal, but he knew that after a
time he returned with his wife into the far North, and that they were
very happy, and one summer set off in a canoe to search for the lost
chasm together. They found it. How or when he could not remember.
After this John Ball's story was filled with wild visions of a great
black world where there was neither sun nor moon nor stars, and they
found gold and dug it by the light of fires. And one day the woman
went a little way back in this world and never came back.

It was then that the old madness returned. In his search for his lost
wife John Ball never found the end of the great cavern. He saw strange
people, he fought great beasts in this black world that were larger
than the biggest moose in the forests, and he told of rushing torrents
and thundering cataracts in the bowels of the earth. Even in his
returning sanity the old man told these things as true.

George Newsome, the factor, lost no time in writing to the Company at
Montreal, inquiring about John Ball, and a month later he received
word that a man by that name had worked as an inspector of raw furs
during the years 1877 and 1878. He had left Montreal for the North
thirty years before. In all probability he soon after went in search
of the lost gold, and for more than a quarter of a century had lived
as a wild man in the solitudes.

It was at this time in the convalescence of the doctor's patient that
Roderick's mother made a suggestion which took the Post by storm.
It was that the factor and his family accompany her and Rod back to
civilization for a few weeks' visit. To the astonishment of all, and
especially to Minnetaki and the princess mother, the factor fell in
heartily with the scheme, with the stipulation that the Drews return
with them early in the autumn. An agent from the head office of the
Company had come up f