ail, on an island in the middle of
Black Bear Lake. He had never seen the wife. A poor sort of woman, he
made up his mind, that would marry a fiddler. Probably a half-breed;
maybe an Indian. Anyway, he had no sympathy for her. Without a doubt,
it was the woman who did the trapping and cut the wood. Any man who
would tote a fiddle around on his back--

Corporal Blake traveled fast, and it was afternoon of the second day
when he came to the dense spruce forest that shut in Black Bear Lake.
Here something happened to change his plans somewhat. He met an Indian
he knew--an Indian who, for two or three good reasons that stuck in the
back of his head, dared not lie to him; and this tribesman, coming
straight from the Thoreau cabin, told him that Jan was not at home, but
had gone on a three-day trip to see the French missioner who lived on
one of the lower Wholdaia waterways.

Blake was keen on strategem. With him, man-hunting was like a game of
chess; and after he had questioned the Indian for a quarter of an hour
he saw his opportunity. Pastamoo, the Cree, was made a part of his
Majesty's service on the spot, with the promise of torture and speedy
execution if he proved himself a traitor.

Blake turned over to him his dogs and sledge, his provisions, and his
tent, and commanded him to camp in the heart of a cedar swamp a few
miles back, with the information that he would return for his outfit at
some time in the indefinite future. He might be gone a day or a week.
When he had seen Pastamoo off, he continued his journey toward the
cabin, in the hope that Jan Thoreau's wife was either an Indian or a
fool. He was too old a hand at his game to be taken in by the story
that had been told to the Cree.

Jan had not gone to the French missioner's. A murderer's trail would
not be given away like that. Of course the wife knew. And Corporal
Blake desired no better string to a criminal than the faith of a wife.
Wives were easy if handled right, and they had put the finishing touch
to more than one of his great successes.

At the edge of the lake he fell back on his old trick--hunger,
exhaustion, a sprained leg. It was not more than a quarter of a mile
across the snow-covered ice of the lake to the thin spiral of smoke
that he saw rising above the thick balsams on the island. Five times in
that distance he fell upon his face; he crawled like a man about to
die. He performed an arduous task, a devilish task, and when at last he
reac