as to the precise spot, I assure you I have
no more idea than the man in the moon."

"It's a dream--it must be!" the young woman protested gropingly. "Last
night I was in a city--in Quebec."

"So was I," was the prompt rejoinder. Then he felt for his watch,
saying: "Wait a moment, let's see if it really was last night."

She waited; and then--"Was it?" she inquired eagerly.

"Yes, it must have been; my watch is still running."

She put her hand to her head. "I can't seem to think very clearly. If we
were in Quebec last night, we can't be so very far from Quebec this
morning. Can't you--don't you recognize this place at all?"

Prime took his first comprehensive survey of the surroundings. So far as
could be seen there was nothing but the lake, with its farther shore
dimly visible, and the primeval forest of pine, spruce, fir, and ghostly
birch--a forest all-enveloping, shadowy, and rather forbidding, even
with the summer morning sunlight playing upon it.

"It looks as if we might be a long way from Quebec," he ventured. "I am
not very familiar with the Provinces, but these woods----"

She interrupted him anxiously. "A long way? How could it be--in a single
night?" Then: "You are giving me to understand that you are not--that
you don't know how we come to be here?"

"You must believe that, if you can't believe anything else," he hastened
to say. "I don't know where we are, or how we got here, or why we should
be here. In other words, I am not the kidnapper; I'm the kidnapped--or
at least half of them."

"It seems as if it _must_ be a bad dream," she returned, with the frown
of perplexity growing between the pretty eyes. "Things like this don't
really happen, you know."

"I know they don't, as a rule. I've tried to make them happen, now and
then, on paper, but they always seem to lack a good bit in the way of
verisimilitude."

The young woman turned away to walk down to the lake edge, where she
knelt and washed her face and hands, drying them afterward on her
handkerchief.

"Well," she asked, coming back to him, "have you thought of anything
yet?"

He shook his head. "Honestly, I haven't anything left to think with.
That part of my mind has basely escaped. But I have found something,"
and he pointed to a little heap of provisions and utensils piled at the
upper edge of the sand belt: a flitch of bacon, sewn in canvas, a tiny
sack of flour, a few cans of tinned things, matches, a camper's
frying-pan, and