had not entirely deserted him, he would
surely make discoveries of importance.

Day after day the journey continued without rest. On the fourth day
after leaving Fort McMurray it was Joe Clamart who brought in David's
supper, and he grunted a protest at his long hours of muscle-breaking
labor at the sweeps. When David questioned him he shrugged his
shoulders, and his mouth closed tight as a clam. On the fifth, the
bateau crossed the narrow western neck of Lake Athabasca, slipping past
Chipewyan in the night, and on the sixth it entered the Slave River. It
was the fourteenth day when the bateau entered Great Slave Lake, and
the second night after that, as dusk gathered thickly between the
forest walls of the Yellowknife, David knew that at last they had
reached the mouth of the dark and mysterious stream which led to the
still more mysterious domain of Black Roger Audemard.

That night the rejoicing of the bateau men ashore was that of men who
had come out from under a strain and were throwing off its tension for
the first time in many days. A great fire was built, and the men sang
and laughed and shouted as they piled wood upon it. In the flare of
this fire a smaller one was built, and kettles and pans were soon
bubbling and sizzling over it, and a great coffee pot that held two
gallons sent out its steam laden with an aroma that mingled joyously
with the balsam and cedar smells in the air. David could see the whole
thing from his window, and when Joe Clamart came in with supper, he
found the meat they were cooking over the fire was fresh moose steak.
As there had been no trading or firing of guns coming down, he was
puzzled and when he asked where the meat had come from Joe Clamart only
shrugged his shoulders and winked an eye, and went out singing about
the allouette bird that had everything plucked from it, one by one. But
David noticed there were never more than four men ashore at the same
time. At least one was always aboard the bateau, watching his door and
windows.

And he, too, felt the thrill of an excitement working subtly within
him, and this thrill pounded in swifter running blood when he saw the
men about the fire jump to their feet suddenly and go to meet new and
shadowy figures that came up indistinctly just in the edge of the
forest gloom. There they mingled and were lost in identity for a long
time, and David wondered if the newcomers were of the people of Chateau
Boulain. After that, Bateese and Joe