you think so? I doubt it very much."

"Why?"

"Because, in the most admirable marriage there must be some preservation
of the reticences. It is possible for people to know each other too
well."

"I don't think so, if the qualities are of the kind that will stand the
test."

"Who has such qualities?" she asked quickly.

"You have, for one. I didn't believe there was a human woman on earth
who could go through what you have and still keep sweet. Setting aside
the hardships, I fancy most other women would have gone stark, staring
mad puzzling over the mystery."

"Ah, yes; the mystery. Shall we ever be able to explain it?"

"Not if we decide to throw Grider overboard, I'm afraid."

"Doesn't the Mr. Grider solution seem less and less possible to you as
time goes on?" she asked. "It does to me. The motive--a mere practical
joke--isn't strong enough. Whoever abducted us was trying for something
larger than a laugh at our expense."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you? Big risks were incurred, and the expense
must have been considerable, too. Still, as I have said before, if we
leave Grider out of it we abandon the one only remotely tenable
explanation. I grant you that the joke motive is weak, but aside from
that there is no motive at all. Nobody in this world could have any
possible object in getting rid of me, and I am sure that the assumption
applies with equal force to you. You see where it leaves us."

"I know," was the ready rejoinder. "If the mystery had stopped with our
discovery of the aeroplane-tracks, it would have been different. But it
didn't stop there. It continued with our finding of the ownerless canoe
stocked for a long journey. Was the canoe left for us to find?"

Prime knew his companion well enough by this time to be willing to trust
her with the grewsome truth.

"I don't know what connection the canoe may have had with our
kidnapping, if any, but I am going to tell you something that I didn't
care to tell you until we were far enough away from the scene of it. We
reasoned that there were two owners for the canoe, arguing from the two
rifles and the two hunting-knives. Do you know why they didn't turn up
while we were waiting for them?"

"No."

"It was because they couldn't. They were dead."

"You knew it at the time?" she asked.

"Yes. I found them. It was in a little glade just below our camp at the
river-head. They had fought a duel with knives. It was horrible, and I
thought it best not