ing kept them in fairly close
touch. This in itself, thought Donald, should be a matter in his
favor, and not an obstacle, as it appeared to be. Pondering,
searching, he racked his weary brain feverishly until Peter Rainy
unobtrusively announced that dinner was ready. Then, occupied with
other things, he put the matter from his mind.

The sluggish dawn had barely cast its first glow across the
measureless snows when Rainy roused him from heavy sleep. After a
breakfast of boiled fat, meat, tea and hard bread, they gathered
the four dogs together, and with much difficulty got them into
traces. Mistisi, the leader, a bad dog when not working, strained
impatiently in the moose-hide harness. Donald, when the packs had
been strapped securely on, gave a quick final inspection, and then
a word that sent the train moving toward the gate in the wall.

But few men were about, and an indifferent wave of the hand from
these sped the party on its way. Outside the gate, Peter Rainy
took the lead, breaking a path for the dogs with his snowshoes,
while McTavish walked beside the loaded sled. Their course ran
westward up the frozen Dickey River, which now lay adamant beneath
the iron cold and drifting snow. Forty miles they would follow it,
to the fork that led on the north to Beaver Lake, and on the south
to Bolsover. Taking the south branch, they would then struggle
across the wind-swept body of water, and follow the river ten miles
farther, to a headland upon which stood the snow-muffled block-house
of Fort Dickey.

If you draw a straight line north from Ashland, Wisconsin, and
follow it for six hundred and fifty miles, you will find yourself
in the vicinity of Fort Dickey, in the midst of the most appalling
wilderness on the face of the globe. In that journey, you will
have crossed Lake Superior and the great tangle of spruce that
extends for two hundred miles north of it. North of Lake St.
Joseph, which is the head of the great Albany River, whence the
waters drain to Hudson Bay, you will strike north across the
Keewatin barrens: Bald, fruitless rocks, piled as by an indifferent
hand; great stretches of almost impenetrable forest, ravines,
lakes, rivers, and rapids; all these will hinder and baffle your
progress. Add to such conditions snow, ice, and eighty degrees
of frost, and you have the situation that Donald McTavish faced
the day he left Fort Severn.

CHAPTER III

A MYSTERIOUS MESSAGE

"What do you know about t