re's de leddy."

For an instant there was no reply, but while Stefan yelled again she
saw, through a small opening in the interlaced branches, that the door
opened. A huge dog came out and rolled in the snow, barking. The man
waved a hand.

"I can't vait a moment. Good-by, leddy, I must go. You tell Hugo why I
hurry so."

The man had jumped on the toboggan and he was already being borne
away, swiftly, by his team of wild shaggy brutes that seemed never to
have known a weary moment in their lives. And she stood there, at the
foot of a great blasted pine, terror-stricken, wondering what further
torture of mind and body the world had in store for her.

But for that hut the place was a frozen desert, with no other sign of
man. And she was alone--alone with him--and the fierce-looking dog was
now running towards her. She leaned back against the tree, feeling
that without some support she must collapse at its foot.

CHAPTER V

When Gunpowder Speaks

Hugo Ennis, a man well under thirty, tall and spare of form, with the
lithe and active limbs that are capable of hard and prolonged action,
had stood for a time by the tough door of his little shack. It was a
single-roomed affair, quite large enough for a lone man, which he had
carefully built of peeled logs. Within it there was a bunk fixed
against the wall, upon which his heavy blankets had been folded in a
neat pile, for he was a man of some order. Near the other end there
was a stove, a good one that could keep the place warm and amply
sufficed for his simple cookery. The table was of axe-hewn cedar
planks and the two chairs had been rustically designed of the same
material. Between the logs forming the walls the spaces had been
chinked with moss, covered with blue clay taken from the river-bank,
above the falls. Strong pegs had been driven into the heavy wood and
from them hung traps and a couple of guns, with spare snowshoes and
odd pieces of apparel. In a corner of the room there were steel
hand-drills, heavy hammers, a pick and a shovel. Against the walls he
had built strong shelves that held perhaps a score of books and a
varied assortment of groceries. More of these latter articles had been
placed on a swinging board hung from the roof, out of reach of
thieving rodents.

He had been looking down, over the great rocky ledge at one side of
his shack, into the big pool of the Roaring River, which at this time
was but a wild jam of huge slabs of ice insecu