nd it, all chewed, close by." She
pulled out a rag of fur from under her snow-caked sweater; and as the
stale reek of the Skunk's Misery wolf dope rose from the thing, I knew
the smell in the room had been no fancy, and how Dudley Wilbraham had
died. I wheeled and saw Macartney's face,--the face of a man who took me
for a fool whose nose would tell him nothing.

"D'ye mean _that_ was all you found?" I got out.

"No! The rest was there. But it was--unrecognizable! Even I couldn't
look at it. It was--pretty tough, for girls. I shot one wolf we scared
off it, but I couldn't do anything more. I couldn't lift--it;
but--Dudley's coat was on it." He had turned so white that I remembered
his faint in the assay office, like you do remember things that don't
matter. I would have thought him chicken-hearted for a wholesale
murderer, if it had not been for the cold hate in his eyes.

"D'ye mean you left Dudley--out there in the bush? Where the devil was
Baker, that black and white weasel you set to look after him? I'll bet
he saved _his_ skin! Where is he?"

"Baker's missing, too," simply; and I did not believe it. "And I don't
see what else I could have done but leave Dudley. None of the men were
with me to carry him in; it had begun to snow; and in another hour I
couldn't have kept the track back to La Chance. As it was, Miss Marcia
played out; I had to carry her most of the way. And that's all there is
to it," with sudden impatience, "except that Wilbraham's dead and
Baker's missing. If he wasn't, he would have brought Dudley in."

"Yes," I said. I saw Charliet's head poke around the corner of the
kitchen door and called to him to carry Marcia to her room, and to get
fires going and something to eat; for the queer part of it was that
there seemed to be two of me, and one of them was thinking it was
starving. It saw Charliet and my dream girl take Marcia out, and the
other me turned on Macartney.

"By gad, there's one thing more," I said slowly. "You don't have to go
on playing moving pictures, Dick Hutton, or using an alias either!
You've killed Dudley and Thompson, and for a good guess Dunn and
Collins, if I can't be sure--and you'd have had me first of all, if your
boulder and your wolf dope hadn't failed you on the Caraquet road!"

Macartney's furious, surprised oath was real. "I don't know what you
mean! Who on earth"--but he stammered on it--"Who d'ye mean by Hutton?"

"You," said I. "And if you're not he, I don't k