ok his head. Horace was his elder brother, a mining engineer
mostly employed in the North Country.

"He's still somewhere in the North Woods. I haven't heard from him
since October, but I'm expecting him to turn up almost any day now.
Why, what's the matter?"

"The matter? Something pretty big," returned Maurice.

Maurice Stark was Fred's most intimate friend in Toronto University,
from which he had himself graduated the summer before. He knew
Macgregor less well, for the big Scotch-Canadian was in the medical
school. His home place was somewhere far up in the North Woods, but he
had a great intercollegiate reputation as a long-distance runner. It
was, in fact, chiefly in a sporting way that Fred had come to know him,
for Fred held an amateur skating championship, and was even then
training for the ice tournament to be held in Toronto in a few weeks.

"It's something big!" Maurice repeated. "I wish Horace were here,
but--could you get a holiday from your office for a week or ten days?"

"I've got it already," said Fred. "I reserved my holidays last summer,
and things aren't busy in a real estate office at this time of year. I
guess I could get two weeks if I wanted it. I'm spending most of my
time now training for the five and ten miles."

"Could you skate a hundred and fifty miles in two days?" demanded
Macgregor.

"I might if I had to--if it was a case of life and death."

"That's just what it is--a case of life and death, and possibly a
fortune into the bargain!" cried Maurice. "You see--but Mac has the
whole story."

The Scottish medical student went to the window, raised the blind and
peered out at the wintry sky.

"No sign of snow yet," he said in a tone of satisfaction.

"What's that got to do with it?" demanded Fred, who was burning with
curiosity by this time. "What's going on, anyway? Hurry up."

"Spoil the skating," said Macgregor briefly. "Well," he went on after
a moment, "this is how I had the story.

"I live away up north of North Bay, you know, at a little place called
Muirhead. I went home for a little visit last week, and the second day
I was there they brought in a sick Indian from Hickson, a little
farther north--sick with smallpox. The Hickson authorities wouldn't
have him at any price, and they had just passed him on to us. The
people at Muirhead didn't want him either. It wasn't such a very bad
case of smallpox, but the poor wretch had suffered a good deal of
expo