er
expedition into the virgin Clearwater for half of such gains as he
should make. In a few weeks more the winter would close down; the
horses, essential to such a trip as this, had to be driven down to the
gate of the Outside,--three hundred miles to the bank of a great
river. He had time for one more dash for the rainbow's end, and no one
could stake him for it. He had some food supplies, but the horse-rent
was an unsolved problem. He could see no ray of hope as he picked up,
half-heartedly, the last letter of the pile.

But at once his interest returned. It had been mailed in a far distant
city in the United States, and the fine, clear handwriting was obviously
feminine. He didn't have to rub the paper between his thumb and
forefinger to mark its rich, heavy quality and its beauty,--the
stationery of an aristocrat. The message was singularly terse:

My Dear Mr. Bronson:

I am informed, by the head of your provincial game commission, that
you can be employed to guide for hunting parties wishing to hunt in the
Clearwater, north of Bradleyburg. I do not wish to hunt game, but I do
wish to penetrate that country in search of my fiance, Mr. Harold
Lounsbury, of whom doubtless you have heard, and who disappeared in the
Clearwater district six years ago. I will be accompanied by Mr.
Lounsbury's uncle, Kenly Lounsbury, and I wish you to secure the outfit
and a man to cook at once. You will be paid the usual outfitter's rates
for thirty days. We will arrive in Bradleyburg September twentieth by
stage. Yours sincerely, Virginia Tremont.

Bill finished the note, pocketed it carefully, and a boyish light was in
his eyes as he shook fragrant tobacco into his pipe. "The way out," he
told himself. "She won't care if I do my prospecting the same time."

His thought swung back to a scene of many Septembers before, of a camp
he had made beside a distant stream and of a wayfarer who had eaten of
his bread and journeyed on,--never to pass that way again. There had
been one curious circumstance connected with the meeting, otherwise it
might not have lingered so clearly in Bill's memory. It had seemed to
him, at the time, that he had encountered the stranger on some previous
occasion. There was a haunting familiarity in his face, a fleeting
memory that he could not trace or identify. Yet nothing in the
stranger's past life had offered an explanation. He was a newcomer, he
said,--on his first trip north. Bill, on t