olled on as before--black--oily--sinister.

A broad cloud, pall-like, threatening, which had mounted unnoticed by
the girl, blotted out the light of the stars, as if to hide from alien
eyes some unlovely secret of the wilds.

The darkness was real, now; and Chloe, in a sudden panic of terror,
dashed wildly for the clearing--stumbling--crashing through the bush as
she ran; her way lighted at intervals by flashes of distant lightning.
She paused upon the verge of the bank at the point where it entered the
clearing; at the point where the wilderness crowded menacingly her
little outpost of civilization. Panting, she stood and stared out over
the smooth flowing, immutable river.

A lightning flash, nearer and more vivid than any preceding, lighted
for an instant the whole landscape. Then, the mighty crash of thunder,
and the long, hoarse moan of wind, and in the midst of it, that other
sound--the horrible sound that once before had sent her dashing
breathless from the night--the demoniacal, mocking laugh of the great
loon.

With a low, choking sob, the girl fled toward the little square of
light that glowed from the window of her cabin.

CHAPTER IX

ON SNARE LAKE

When Bob MacNair left Chloe Elliston's camp, he swung around by the way
of Mackay Lake, a detour that required two weeks' time and added
immeasurably to the discomfort of the journey. Day by day, upon lake,
river, and portage, Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack wondered much at
his silence and the unwonted hardness of his features.

These two Indians knew MacNair. For ten years, day and night, they had
stood at his beck and call; had followed him through all the vast
wilderness that lies between the railways and the frozen sea. They had
slept with him, had feasted and starved with him, at his shoulder faced
death in a hundred guises, and they loved him as men love their God.
They had followed him during the lean years when, contrary to the
wishes of his father, the stern-eyed factor at Fort Norman, he had
refused the offers of the company and devoted his time, winter and
summer, to the exploration of rivers and lakes, rock ridges and
mountains, and the tundra that lay between, in search of the lost
copper mines of the Indians; the mines that lured Hearne into the North
in 1771, and which Hearne forgot in the discovery of a fur empire so
vast as to stagger belief.

But, as the canoe forged northward, Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack
held their