sure, and he was pretty shaky. Everybody was in a panic about him;
they wanted to ship him straight down to North Bay; but finally I got
him fixed up in a sort of isolation camp and looked after him myself."

"Good for you, Mac!" Fred ejaculated.

"Oh, it was good hospital training, and I'd been recently vaccinated,
so I didn't run any danger. It paid me, though, for when I'd pulled
him around a bit he told me the story, and a queer tale it was."

Macgregor paused and went to look out of the window again with anxiety.
Fred was listening breathlessly.

"It seems that last September this Indian, along with a couple of
half-breeds, went up into the woods for the winter trapping, and built
a cabin on one of the branches of the Abitibi River, away up northeast
of Lake Timagami. I know about where it was. I suppose you've never
been up in that country, Osborne?"

"Never quite as far as that. Last summer I was nearly up to Timagami
with Horace."

Fred had made a good many canoeing trips into the Northern wilderness
with his brother, and Horace himself, as mining engineer, surveyor, and
free-lance prospector, had spent most of the last five years in that
region. At irregular and generally unexpected times he would turn up
in Toronto with a bale of furs, a sack of mineralogical specimens, and
a book of geological notes, which would presently appear in the
"University Science Quarterly," or even in more important publications.
He was an Associate of the Canadian Geographical Society, and always
expected to hit on a vein of mineral that would make his whole family
millionaires.

"Well, I've been up and down the Abitibi in a canoe," Macgregor went
on, "and I think I know almost the exact spot where they must have
built the cabin. Anyhow, I'm certain I could find it, for the Indian
described it as accurately as he could.

"It seems that the three men trapped there till the end of October, and
then a white man came into their camp. He was all alone, and
complained of feeling sick. They were kind enough to him; he stayed
with them, but in a few days they found out what the matter was. He
had smallpox.

"Now, you know how the Indians and half-breeds dread smallpox. They
fear it like death itself, but these fellows seem to have behaved
pretty well at first. They did what they could for the sick man, but
pretty soon one of the trappers came down with the disease. It took a
violent form, and he was dead in a few da