eference to Spurling. For the next three days they lay in hiding, no
one coming near them, either friend or enemy. To occupy the time, and
forget their anxiety, as though they were not men who dwelt beneath
the shadow of death, they talked of their old quest, making plans for
the future, and mapping out with their fingers in the dust new routes,
by the following of which El Dorado might be attained. And it was thus
that they strove to escape the pain of the realness of their
present--by entering into a faery land, sufficiently remote from life
to remain unthreatened.

It was in this land of the imagination that they had first met, and
formed their friendship. Revisiting it in one another's company, the
hideousness of what had happened was, for the time being, blotted out;
they renewed their former intimacy and passion. With the mention of
familiar names, kind associations of bygone pleasures were aroused,
and the old affection sprang to life. They shrank from any allusion to
such things as had befallen them since their London days. Yet
continually, in the midst of the most eager conversation, one or other
of them would glance up, and cast his eyes along the river to the
eastward, remembering Murder Point. It was in the early dawn of the
fourth day, when, gazing toward the store, Granger descried two red
squares of sail flapping against the sunrise. It was his lookout, and
Spurling was asleep. He aroused him, bending over him and crying, "The
York boats are coming from Crooked Creek; we shall be rid of Robert
Pilgrim now." When Spurling was thoroughly awake and had seen the
sails for himself, he asked him to explain. Then Granger told him how,
in the summer of every year, the outposts of the Hudson Bay Company
send in their winter's catch of furs to the head fort of their
district, which in this case was God's Voice, where the skins are
baled and graded, and dispatched to the London headquarters--which,
being the most important duty of a factor's year, meant that Robert
Pilgrim would have to return in order to superintend.

All through the long June day they waited, hoping to see their enemy's
departure; but the sails had been lowered and nothing was now visible
of the York boats save their tall bare masts jutting above the
river-banks. At times they would see groups of voyageurs, walking
distantly among the trees, perhaps assisting the factor in one last
lazy search for the fugitive. As the heat of the afternoon increa