s Wabi who spoke
the words aloud.

"Cabin and head of chasm."

Rod went back to the table and sat down, the precious bit of birch-bark
under his hand. Mukoki, standing mute, had listened and heard, and was
as if stunned by their discovery. But now his mind returned to the moose
steak, and he placed it on the stove. Wabi stood with his hands in his
pockets, and after a little he laughed a trembling, happy laugh.

"Well, Rod, you've found your mine. You are as good as rich!"

"You mean that we have found our mine," corrected the white youth. "We
are three, and we just naturally fill the places of John Ball, Henri
Langlois and Peter Plante. They are all dead. The gold is ours!"

Wabi had taken up the map.

"I can't see the slightest possibility of our not finding it," he said.
"The directions are as plain as day. We follow the chasm, and somewhere
in that chasm we come to a waterfall. A little beyond this the creek
that runs through the gorge empties into a larger stream, and we follow
this second creek or river until we come to the third fall. The cabin is
there, and the gold can not be far away."

He had carried the map to the door again, and Rod joined him.

"There is nothing that gives us an idea of distance on the map," he
continued. "How far did you travel down the chasm?"

"Ten miles, at least," replied Rod.

"And you discovered no fall?"

"No."

With a splinter picked up from the floor Wabi measured the distances
between the different points on the diagram.

"There is no doubt but what this map was drawn by John Ball," he said
after a few moments of silent contemplation. "Everything points to that
fact. Notice that all of the writing is in one hand, except the
signatures of Langlois and Plante, and you could hardly decipher the
letters in those signatures if you did not already know their names from
this writing below. Ball wrote a good hand, and from the construction of
the agreement over the signatures he was a man of pretty fair education.
Don't you think so? Well, he must have drawn this map with some idea of
distance in his mind. The second fall is only half as far from the first
fall as the third fall is from the second, which seems to me conclusive
evidence of this. If he had not had distance in mind he would not have
separated the falls in this way on the map."

"Then if we can find the first fall we can figure pretty nearly how far
the last fall is from the head of the chasm," said Rod.