place--and your boy."

"But I told him----D'ye mean he just _let_ you find him?"

"He did not," grimly. "He was hidden away somewhere, and I don't suppose
he'd ever have come out, if I hadn't happened to use what seems to have
been your password! I said out loud that I'd give twenty dollars to any
one who'd get me some food; and out comes your friend, and says you told
him to trust any one who said that, and where was the twenty? So, after
that, we settled down!"

"But----" Dudley's selfishness had always been colossal, yet this time
it beat even me. "What did you suppose was going to become of your
sister and Paulette--left with Macartney when you'd disappeared, and the
Halfway picket had got _me_?" I burst out.

"My acquaintance with you made me hopeful they wouldn't get you," Dudley
began drily, "and as for the girls----" but his sham indifference broke
down. "Don't talk of it, will you?" he bellowed. "I did think you'd be
all right, but I was in hell for those girls till I could get to
Caraquet and take back help for them! Only this cursed snow stopped me.
We had to wait till it was packed enough for Baker to sneak down to the
Halfway and steal a couple of my own horses, for us to ride to Caraquet.
But that's how I'm here--and how Marcia found a half-eaten man in my
top-coat, that she thought was me!"

I was speechless. It was all so simple, even to Dudley's twenty dollars
and my boy. But before I could say so, Dudley turned on me with his old
vicious pounce. "Why in blazes don't you tell me what you left Marcia
for, after bullying me because I did? And why are you and Paulette here,
if you thought I was killed?"

"We left her because we had to, with a thousand tons of earth between us
and the only way we could have got back to her alive," said I
wrathfully. "And as for why we're here,"--I poured out the whole story
of my return to La Chance, from Dudley's own funeral procession that met
me and my bootless fight with Macartney, to the resurrection of Collins
and Dunn, and Paulette's and my race across Lac Tremblant. I left out
Marcia's share in my defeat, but Dudley gave a comprehending sniff.

"Marcia always was a fool about Macartney! But it's no matter, since she
isn't with him--whether he's alive or dead. Only you were a worse fool,
Stretton, to cross that lake with a girl in tow. I don't know why you
weren't both drowned, like Thompson----" but his voice broke. He was a
good little man, under his bad hab