d in, say, four days. Let's see--Bear Pond--as fur
as the leetle Still water; then over them Green Mount'ins and through
Alder Swamp."

"And it's clear goin', Hite," interposed the Clown, "as fur as Buck
Pond. I was in thar once with the survey." Holcomb did not speak; it
was a country which he had never entered.

"I had a trappin' shanty at Buck Pond once," continued Holt, "most
thirty years ago. I knowed that country in them days as well as I know
my hat and I presume likely it ain't changed. A day from Buck Pond,
steady travellin', ought, in my idee, to git us out to the cars. I'll
do my best to git ye thar."

Thus it was hurriedly decided that the trapper should lead the way.
Holcomb suggested that he and the trapper should return to the burned
camp in the hope, if possible, of finding something left which might
be of use on the journey. They were sadly in need of an axe; the dull
hatchet they had found in the cook's shanty they knew would prove next
to useless. So Holcomb and Holt set off at once for the scene of the
disaster while the rest got together into more practical carrying
shape all that they possessed, ready for a start immediately on their
return.

Soon Holcomb and the trapper were trudging about in the stifling heat
of the ruins; they had drenched themselves to the waist in the brook
and were thus enabled to make a hurried search within the fire zone.
The first ruins they came upon were the stables--not a horse had
escaped.

Although they found it impossible to approach the still blazing ruins
of the main camp, they discovered among the smouldering, charred
timbers of Holcomb's cabin the blade of a double-bitted axe, its helve
burned off. A few rods further on, in the blinding smoke, they found a
keg of nails. The only things the flames had left around them were of
iron. An iron reservoir lay on its side where it had fallen; twisted
girders loomed above the cauldron of desultory flame, marking the
rectangle of the main camp. They shovelled the hot nails and the
blades of the two axes into a blackened tin bucket and started back to
the brook.

The trapper led. He had gone about a dozen rods farther on when he
halted abruptly, peering under the palm of his hand at a smouldering
log ahead of him.

"God Almighty!" he cried, staring back at Holcomb, as he pointed to
the smoking log.

Holcomb, with stinging eyes, saw a claw of a hand thrust above the
log. The bones of the wrist were visible; the r