men of
Chance Along--he was as ignorant as a spotted harbor-seal. He knew no
more of Mary Kavanagh's heart than of Flora Lockhart's, but even a
savage may win a heart in ignorance, and even a savage may learn!

With a great oath the skipper vowed that he would find that necklace;
but not to sell for gold, as his old intention had been, but to sell for
the possession of the girl from up-along. It seemed an easy thing to do.
Foxey Jack Quinn could not have gone very far away from the harbor in
that "flurry." Perhaps he had turned back and inland, searching blindly
for shelter, and lay even now somewhere near this fire? It struck the
skipper as a great idea. He would have three clear days to give to the
quest of the body of Jack Quinn without arousing the curiosity of the
harbor. Three days, as nearly as he could reckon, was the shortest time
in which a man could make the journey to Witless Bay and back. As he
could not show himself in Chance Along within that time without raising
doubts as to the safe delivery of the letter, he was free to devote the
time to the recovery of the necklace. It was a grand arrangement
altogether. Of course he would keep covertly in touch with the harbor,
in case of another panic of superstition; and of course he would find
the corpse of Jack Quinn with the precious necklace in its pocket.

CHAPTER XII

DICK LYNCH GOES ON THE WAR-PATH

Black Dennis Nolan's explorations in the wilderness in search of the
corpse of Foxey Jack Quinn served no purpose save that of occupying his
three days of exile from Chance Along. Of course he acquired a deal of
exact information of the country lying beyond the little harbor and
north and south of it for several miles; but this knowledge of the
minute details of the landscape did not seem of much value to him, at
the time. He searched high and low, far and wide, returning at intervals
of from three to five hours to within sound of the axes of his men. He
dug the dry snow from clefts between granite boulders and ransacked the
tangled hearts of thickets of spruce-tuck and alder. He investigated
frozen swamps, wooded slopes, rocky knolls and hummocks, and gazed down
through black ice at the brown waters of frozen ponds. He carried on his
search scientifically, taking his camp as a point of departure and
moving away from it in ever widening and lengthening curves. He found
the shed antlers of a stag, the barrel of an old, long-lost sealing gun,
the skele