ty.
"Something's wrong," he said to himself,--"but what? Better boil t'
kettle and think it over. Perhaps better luck after lunch."

Unstringing his tomahawk, he started to find some dry wood with which
to kindle a fire. None being close to the beach, he walked a few yards
into the forest, and had just commenced on a tree when he noticed by
the white scar that a branch had been broken quite recently from the
very same trunk. "Wind and t' weight of t' silver thaw," he supposed,
for there was no one living within fifty miles, and no other fur-path
at that time, anyhow, in the bay. The northern komatik trail crossed
twenty miles seaward, where the calm, wide expanse made the ice much
safer in the early winter than near the swift current at the river
mouth. But as he stooped to clear the trunk for his own axe, he
noticed that, though disguised as a break, a cut had been first made
to weaken the bough. "Some one's been here, that's sure," he said to
himself. "Who can it be?" So much snow had fallen since Malcolm had
gone after his wife that it was no easy matter to guess an
answer--much less to read it from the trails around.

His frugal meal finished, he sat meditatively smoking his pipe by the
glowing embers of his generous fire. But no light came to him.
Practically no one lived near. The few who did were as honest as
daylight. He had not an enemy on earth so far as he knew; and yet he
realized now that the good condition of his traps, and especially his
baits, after a fortnight of the blusterous Labrador fall weather
needed accounting for. Well, anyhow, there was only one thing to
do--go and finish his round, and when he got back he could talk the
trouble over with his wife.

Slipping on his snow racquets and once more shouldering his nonny-bag,
he strode off toward his next trap. It was new to him to suspect men.
It was his business as a trapper to suspect Nature. It was, however,
from this new viewpoint that he must approach his next task. For
therein lies the intense interest of the trapper's life--every moment
affords a keen problem. The gambler has the excitement of a possible
big return, a sudden acquisition of gain. The trapper has all that,
and the added satisfaction of knowing that it is his ability and not
merely his luck which has won out.

At first sight there seemed nothing amiss with trap twenty-one. It had
been tailed on the top of a specially felled tree. There it was
still--a little mound of snow ab