the river" again.

"Why not stop here a couple of days and prospect?" Mac suggested at
breakfast.

The proposal struck them all favorably. It was the real beginning of
the search for fortune. Fred in particular was fired with instant
hope, and immediately after breakfast he set out to explore the country
north of the river; he intended to make a wide circle back to the Smoke
River and to come homeward down its bank. He carried a compass, the
shotgun, and a luncheon of cold flapjacks and fried deer meat. Horace
went off to the south; Macgregor remained in camp, to jerk the venison
by smoking it over a slow fire.

It was a sunny, warm day. Spring seemed to have come with a bound, and
the warmth had brought out the black flies in swarms. All the boys had
smeared themselves that morning with "fly dope" that they had bought at
the railway station, but even that black, ill-smelling varnish on their
hands and faces was only partly effectual. Great clouds of the little
pests hovered round them.

Fred struck straight north from the river, and then turned a little to
the west. He examined the ground with the utmost care. The land lay
in great ridges and valleys, and he soon found that prospecting was
almost as rough work as fighting the river. In the valleys the earth
was mucky with melting snow water; on the hills it was rocky, with huge
boulders, tumbled heaps of shattered stone, slopes of loose gravel;
everywhere was a tangle of stunted, scrubby birch and poplar, spruce
and jack-pine.

After half an hour he came upon a small creek that flowed from the
northwest. With a glance at his compass, he started to follow it. For
nearly three hours he plodded along the creek, digging into the banks
with a stick and examining every spot where there seemed a chance of
finding blue clay; but he found nothing except ordinary sand and
gravel. At last, disappointed and disheartened, he turned back toward
the Smoke River. After a mile or so he stopped to eat his luncheon,
and built a smudge to keep the flies away; then he proceeded onward
through the rough, unprofitable country.

But if he did not find diamonds, he came on plenty of game. Ruffed
grouse and spruce partridges rose here and there and perched in the
trees. He saw many rabbits, and there were signs where deer or moose
had browsed on the birch twigs. Once, as he came over a ridge, he
caught a glimpse of a black bear digging at a pile of rotten logs in
the va