safe to about a day's march from your friends'
village; and I've put up food enough for the journey. Considering
everything, that's all the fee I need offer you."

"There wouldn't be much use in urging my claim," Clarke acquiesced.

"What about Benson? I noticed you didn't seem particularly anxious to
renew your acquaintance. Are you willing to leave him with us?"

Clarke smiled in an ironical manner.

"Why do you ask, when you mean to keep him? So far as I'm concerned,
you're welcome to the man; I make you a present of him. Have you had
enough of this trip yet, or are you going on?"

"We're going ahead; you can do what you like about it. And now, while
I admire the way you pulled my partner through, there's not much more
to say. I wish you a safe journey. Good-morning."

He turned back toward the fire, while Clarke stood a moment with
clenched hand and a malignant look creeping into his eyes; then,
following the Indian, the doctor silently moved forward across the
muskeg.

CHAPTER XIII

A STAUNCH ALLY

On a dark November morning, when a blustering wind drove the rain
against the windows, Thomas Foster sat stripping the lock of a favorite
gun in the room he called his study, at Hazlehurst, in Shropshire. The
shelves on the handsome paneled walls contained a few works on
agriculture, horse-breeding, and British natural history, but two racks
were filled with guns and fishing-rods and the table at which Foster
was seated had a vise clamped to its edge. He had once had a
commodious gun-room, but had given it up, under pressure from his wife,
as Hazlehurst was small and she had numerous guests, but the study was
his private retreat. A hacksaw, a few files, a wire brush, and a
bottle of Rangoon oil were spread out in front of him, the latter
standing, for the sake of cleanliness, on the cover of the _Field_.

Foster laid down his tools and looked up with an air of humorous
resignation as his wife came in. Mrs. Foster was a slender, vivacious
woman, fond of society.

"Put that greasy thing away for a few minutes and listen to me," she
said, sitting down opposite him.

"I am listening; I'm inclined to think it's my normal state," Foster
answered with a smile. "The greasy thing cost forty guineas, and I
wouldn't trust it to Jenkins after young Jimmy dropped it in a ditch.
Jenkins can rear pheasants with any keeper I've met, but he's no good
at a gun."

"You shouldn't have taken Jimmy out; he'