es; here and there upon the banks there
were lumber camps; in the afternoon a small town was passed, and later
the site of another that had been destroyed by a landslide.

With an eye single to his purpose, the Scotchman made no noon stop, and
the supper fire was built on the right-hand bank of the broadened stream
at a spot where there were no signs of human habitation. As at the
breakfast, Prime's bonds were taken off to permit him to feed himself,
and when the voyage was resumed they were not put on again.

"The wumman tells me ye can't swim, and I'm takin' her word for it," was
the gruff explanation. "If ye go overboard in the night, I'll juist lat
ye droon."

With his hands free, Prime asked if he might smoke. The permission was
given, and, since they had confiscated Prime's store of tobacco with the
remainder of the dunnage, the Scotchman opened his heart and his
tobacco-pouch in the prisoner's behalf, filling his own pipe at the same
time. When the dottles were glowing, the under-sheriff thawed another
degree or so.

"D'ye mean to tell me that ye're goin' to hold to that rideeculous story
of yours in the coort?" he questioned. "It may do for auld Sandy
Macdougal, the under-sheriff; but ye'll no be expectin' a jury to listen
till it."

Prime laughed soberly. "I wish, for your sake and our own, Mr.
Macdougal, that we had a more believable story to tell. But facts are
hard matters to evade. Things have happened to us precisely as I have
tried to tell you. We were drugged in Quebec and abducted--carried off
in an air-machine, as well as we can reason it out--and that is all
there is to it. We don't know any more than you do what we were
kidnapped for--or by whom."

"Weel, ye're a main lang ways from Quebec the noo--some twa hunnerd
miles or mair. And ye're not dressed for the timmer."

"Hardly," said Prime.

Macdougal jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward Lucetta. "Is the
wumman yer wife?"

"No; we are distant cousins, though we had never met before the morning
when we found ourselves on the shore of the big lake."

"Ye mean that ye were strangers to each ither?"

"Just that. Up to that moment neither had known of the existence of the
other."

The Scotchman stared hard at Prime from beneath his shaggy brows.

"Young man, ye'll juist be tellin' me what's yer business, when ye're
not trollopin' round in the timmer with a young wumman that's yer
cousin, and that ye never saw or heard of before."

"I