at down to breakfast
shortly after daylight in the room adjoining the office, where two deal
tables had been drawn together and spread with a new, white oilcloth.

Ethel Manton had entirely recovered from her syncope of the previous
evening, and had offered no elucidation other than that of fatigue.
Nevertheless, not a person in the room but felt that there had been
another and more immediate cause for the girl's collapse.

Charlie had begged to be allowed to "eat with the men," and the foreman
had courteously declined Appleton's invitation to join the party during
their stay in camp.

The dismal and sporadic attempts at conversation had slumped into an
awkward silence, in the midst of which the door burst open and young
Charlie catapulted into the room.

"Oh, Eth! Guess who he is!" he cried. "Guess who's the boss--the man
the Indians call The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die'! It's _Bill Carmody_! And I
knew him the minute I saw him, if he _has_ got whiskers all over his
face and a buckskin shirt.

"And he knew _me_! And he shook hands with me right before all the
men--and you ought to seen 'em look! And he's going to teach me how to
walk on snowshoes! Oh, ain't you _glad_! 'Cause now you and Bill
can----"

"_Charlie!_" The girl's face flamed, and the word seemed wrung from her
very heart. The boy paused for a moment in the midst of his breathless
harangue and eyed his sister with disgust.

"You know you _do_ love him," he continued, his eyes flashing
defiantly, "even if you did have a scrap--and he loves you, too! And
that dang St. Ledger's just nothing but a--a--a _squirt_--that's what
he is--and if I was Bill Carmody I'd punch his head for him if he even
_spoke_ to you again--if you was _my_ girl!

"And I'm going to tell him we _know_ he never swiped those bonds, and
you stuck up for him when old man Carmody told you he did."

The last words of the boy's remarks were addressed to an empty chair,
for the girl, white and trembling, had fled into the other room and
banged the door after her.

Mrs. Appleton, with an unintelligibly muttered excuse, hurriedly
followed, leaving her husband gazing from her retreating back to the
excited face of the youngster, and muttering: "Bless my soul! Bless my
soul!" between the gulps of his coffee, which for once in his life he
swallowed with never a growl at the canned milk. A moment later he
abruptly left the table and, motioning the boy to follow, led the way
to the office.

A hal