nd matches were hurriedly thrown upon the blanket. Now and
again, like some wild thing of the forest, he paused to cock his head
to one side and listen.

"Should I call Marian and stop him?" Lucile asked herself. The
question was left all undecided. The little drama being enacted was
too fascinating to suffer interruption. It was like something that had
happened in her earlier childhood when she had lain in a garret
watching a mother mouse carry away her five children, Lucile thereby
suffering a loss of six cents, for she would have been paid a cent
apiece for the capture of those mice.

The brown boy next approached the kitchen tent. He entered, to appear
a moment later with a modest armload of provisions.

When these had been placed on the blanket, with marvelous speed and
skill he converted the whole into a convenient pack.

"Shall I stop him?" Lucile asked herself.

She was about to call out from her dark corner, when a peculiar action
of the boy arrested her. He appeared to be taking some small object
from beneath the collar of his strange suit of bird-skin.

"I wonder what it is?" she puzzled.

Whatever it was, he walked with it to a broad, flat rock, and placing
it in the very center, turned and left it there. The object gave forth
such a startling lustre in the moonlight, and Lucile was so intent upon
watching it, she did not realize that the brown boy had thrown his pack
over his shoulder and disappeared into the woods.

When she did discover it, she merely shrugged her shoulders and smiled:

"Probably for the best," she told herself. "He's taken nothing of any
great value and nothing we will need badly, and, unless I miss my
guess, he'll be quite able to take care of himself in a wood that is
full of game and berries and where there are fish for throwing in the
hook. Let's see what he left, though."

Cautiously she crept out into the moonlight. A low exclamation escaped
her lips as her hand closed upon the glistening object. As she
examined it closely, she found it to be three teeth, apparently elk
teeth. They were held together with a plain leather thong, but set in
the center of each was a ring of blue jade and in the center of each of
two of the rings was a large pearl. The center of the third was beyond
doubt a crudely cut diamond of about two carats weight. Lucile turned
it over and over in her palm.

"Why, the poor fellow," she murmured. "He's given us a king's ransom
for a fe