promised to
do, and a little later rose to take her leave.

"You're not a good host, Captain McTavish," she said, at the doorway.

"Why?" he questioned.

"You haven't asked me to call again."

"Forgive me!" cried the confused man. "Please, come as often as
you wish. I have enjoyed the visit immensely."

"So have I," she returned, with a coy, sidelong look from her mild
blue eyes, and then, at last, she shut the door behind her.

Donald was really grateful for the call, as it had taken his mind
from the brooding that had occupied it so continuously, and, for
hours afterward, he smiled almost unconsciously at the quaint
transparency, but utter good-heartedness, of the woman's character.

Early in the afternoon, the promised package of papers and the pipe
arrived. The prisoner, who, like all northern woodsmen, found a
pipe his boon companion, filled the bowl with tobacco, and tried
to light it.

Somehow, the brier would not draw, and McTavish impatiently unscrewed
the stem from the bowl to investigate. In the small cavity thus
exposed, he saw an obstruction which, when dug out with a pin,
proved to be a sheet of thin paper, very carefully rolled.

Straightening it out, Donald saw pencil-marks in strange triangles.
There were V's and U's placed in any of four positions, and queer
symbols that resembled the "pot-hooks" of shorthand more than
anything else.

For a moment, he stared perplexed, and then memory returned to him.
This was, indeed, a message from Peter Rainy, and written In the
only language the old Indian could use--the Cree symbols into which
the Bible had been translated by the zealous missionary, James
Evans, back in the fifties. On long winter nights at Fort Dickey,
Peter Rainy had taught his superior to read and write in this
obsolete fashion.

Now, Donald bent to the work. The first words came hard, but, before
he had finished the paper, he was reading easily. And this, freely
translated, is what he saw:

I will be a mile in the woods, along the old beaver trail, from
the fifth night after Miss Jean's departure until the tenth. If
you do not come by then I will go back to Fort Dickey and return
for you when your month is up. There is work for you to do. I
have a clew as to Miss Jean, but you must act at once if you
expect to save her. I have sawed the bars of your window almost
through at the bottom. When in the woods call me with the cry
of an owl.

PETER.

An