to the fireplace with something that sounded
like an oath, and walked out of the house. Nor did he return till the
sun was well down toward the tree-rimmed horizon. When he came back he
brought in an armful of wood and kindling, and began to build a fire.
Hazel came out of her room. Bill greeted her serenely.

"Well, little person," he said, "I hope you'll perk up now."

"I'll try," she returned. "Are you really going to take me out?"

Bill paused with a match blazing in his fingers.

"I'm not in the habit of saying things I don't mean,"' he answered
dryly. "We'll start in the morning."

The dark closed in on them, and they cooked and ate supper in silence.
Bill remained thoughtful and abstracted. He slouched for a time in his
chair by the fire. Then from some place among his books he unearthed a
map, and, spreading it on the table, studied it a while. After that he
dragged in his kyaks from outside, and busied himself packing them with
supplies for a journey--tea and coffee and flour and such things done
up in small canvas sacks.

And when these preparations were complete he got a sheet of paper and a
pencil, and fell to copying something from the map. He was still at
that, sketching and marking, when Hazel went to bed.

By all the signs and tokens, Roaring Bill Wagstaff slept none that
night. Hazel herself tossed wakefully, and during her wakeful moments
she could hear him stir in the outer room. And a full hour before
daylight he called her to breakfast.

CHAPTER XIII

THE OUT TRAIL

"This time last spring," Bill said to her, "I was piking away north of
those mountains, bound for the head of the Naas to prospect for gold."

They were camped in a notch on the tiptop of a long divide, a thousand
feet above the general level. A wide valley rolled below, and from the
height they overlooked two great, sinuous lakes and a multitude of
smaller ones. The mountain range to which Bill pointed loomed seventy
miles distance, angling northwest. The sun glinted on the snow-capped
peaks, though they themselves were in the shadow.

"I've been wondering," Hazel said. "This country somehow seems
different. You're not going back to Cariboo Meadows, are you?"

Bill bestowed a look of surprise on her.

"I should say not!" he drawled. "Not that it would make any difference
to me. But I'm very sure you don't want to turn up there in my
company."

"That's true," she observed. "But all the clothes a