us walk a little way
down the trail."

The doctor eyed him suspiciously as they turned away from the cabin.

"See here, Phil Steele," he said, and there was a hard ring in his
voice, "I've had all sorts of confidence in you, and I've told you more,
perhaps, than I ought. I don't suppose you have a suspicion that you
ought to break it?"

"No, it isn't that," replied Philip, laughing a little uneasily. "I'm
glad you got away with Falkner, and so far as I am concerned no one
will ever know what has happened. It's I who want to place a little
confidence in you now. I am positively at my wits' end, and all over a
situation which seems to place you and me in a class by ourselves--sort
of brothers in trouble, you know," and he told McGill, briefly, of
Isobel, and his search for her.

"I lost them between Lac Bain and Fort Churchill," he finished. "The two
sledges separated, one continuing to Churchill, and the other turning
into the South. I followed the Churchill sledge--and was wrong. When I
came back the snow had covered the other trail."

The little professor stopped suddenly, and squared himself directly in
Philip's path.

"You don't say!" he gasped. There was a look of amazement on his face.

"What a wonderfully little world this is, Phil," he added, smiling in a
curious way. "What a wonderfully, wonderfully little world it is! It's
only a playground, after all, and the funny part of it is that it is not
even large enough to play a game of hide-and-seek in, successfully. I've
proved that beyond question. And here--you--"

"What?" demanded Philip, puzzled by the other's attitude.

"Well, you see, I went first to Nelson House," said McGill, "and from
there up to the Hudson's Bay Company's post in the Cochrane River,
hunting for Falkner and this girl--a man and a woman. And at the
Cochrane Post a Frenchman told me that there was a strange man and woman
up at Lac Bain, and I set off for there. That must have been just about
the time you were starting for Churchill, for on the third day up I met
a sledge that turned me off the Lac Bain trail to take up the nearer
trail to Chippewayan. With this sledge were the two who had been at Lac
Bain, Colonel Becker and his daughter."

For a moment Philip could not speak. He caught the other's hand
excitedly.

"You--you found where they were going?" he asked, when McGill did not
continue.

"Yes. We ate dinner together, and the colonel said they were bound for
Nelson Hous