d tell you what my
impression was."

Stane nodded. "Anyway, white or red he is not going to keep us from our
walk. Are you ready?"

"Quite," she answered, and going outside they slipped on their
snow-shoes, and then made a bee-line out on the lake.

They walked forward for perhaps half-a-mile and halted at a point
whence they got a wide view of the shore. Stane looked up and down the
lake. Its smooth white surface was absolutely without life but for his
companion and himself. Then he scrutinized the shore, point by point,
creek by creek, and Helen also looked carefully.

"No sign of any one," he commented at last. "No camp or fire, we might
be alone in the world. If there is any one he is hidden in the deep
woods, and for the present invisible. I think instead of going back to
the cabin we will make a detour to the point where we surprised the
stranger yesterday."

Stane leading, to break the track in the untrodden snow, they made
their way shorewards and struck it well to the north of the cabin, then
began to work through the woods, keeping a sharp look out as they went.
They saw nothing, however, and when they reached the bushes behind
which the stranger had slipped the previous day, there were no fresh
tracks to awaken alarm. They stood there looking down between the
serried lines of trees. Nothing save the trees was visible, and there
was no sound of movement anywhere. The silence was the silence of
primeval places, and somehow, possibly because of the tenseness of
nerve induced by the circumstances of the walk, the girl was more
conscious of it than ever she had been before.

"There is something inimical in the silence up here," she said in a
whisper, as she gave a little shudder. "One has a feeling as if all the
world of nature were lying in wait to ambush one."

"Nature red in tooth and claw," Stane quoted lightly, "only up here her
teeth are white, and her claws also. And when she bares them a man has
little chance. But I understand your feeling, one has the sense of a
besetting menace. I felt it often last winter when I was new to the
country, and it is a very nasty feeling--as if malign gods were at work
to destroy one, or as if fate were about to snip with her scissors."

"Yes," answered the girl, still whisperingly, then she smiled. "I have
never felt quite like this before. I suppose it rises out of the real
menace that may be hidden in the woods, the menace of some one watching
and waiting to str