." Then, snatching at the first excuse that offered: "I
saw some berries on the river-bank. Let me have the tin again and I'll
see if I can't gather a few before it grows too dark."

Having thus given a plausible reason for a longer absence, he went back
to the canoe to look in the fading light for tracks in the sand. Now
that he made a business of searching for them, he found plenty of them;
heelless tracks as if the feet that had made them had been shod with
moccasins. A little farther down the stream-side there were broken
bushes and a small earth-slide to show where somebody had scrambled up
to the forest level. Following the trail he soon found himself in a
natural clearing, grass-grown and running back from the river a hundred
yards or more. In the centre of this clearing he came upon the ashes of
five separate fires, disposed in the form of a rude cross.

Still there was no sign of the canoe-owners themselves, and the
discovery of the curiously arranged ash-heaps merely added more mystery
to mystery. The fires had been dead for some time. Of this Prime assured
himself by thrusting his hand into the ashes. Clearly the camp, if it
were a camp, had been abandoned for some hours at least. The gathering
dusk warned him that it would be useless to try to track the
fire-makers, and he turned to make his way back to the lake shore and
supper.

It was in the edge of the glade, under the gloomy shadow of a giant
spruce, that he stumbled blindly over some reluctantly yielding obstacle
and fell headlong. Regaining his feet quickly with a nameless fear
unnerving him, he stooped and groped under the shadowing tree, drawing
back horror-stricken when his hand came in contact with the stiffened
arm of a corpse.

He had matches in his pocket, and he found one and lighted it. His hand
shook so that the match went out and he had to light another. By the
brief flare of the second match he saw a double horror. Lying in a
little depression between two spreading roots of the spruce were the
bodies of two men locked in a death-grip. Another match visualized the
tragedy in all its ghastly details. The men were apparently Indians, or
half-breeds, and it had been a duel to the death, fought with knives.

IV

IN THE NIGHT

PRIME made his way to the camp-fire at the lake edge, a prey to many
disturbing emotions. Having lived a life practically void of adventure,