he'll be his son-in-law."

"Oh, I'll be back all right," grinned Downey. "I've got a hunch that
maybe I'll be needed."

"Ye wouldn't be sorry to have to arrest Wentworth for some kind of
thievery, would ye, Downey? I could see ye distrusted him from the
moment ye laid eyes on him."

"U-m-m-m," answered Downey. "I was thinkin' more of, maybe, bringin'
in Alex Thumb--for murder."

A week later Murchison accompanied Wentworth upon a ten-day trip,
during the course of which they visited the proposed mill site, the
McNabb holdings, and a great part of the available pulp-wood territory
adjoining. With Murchison's help, Wentworth sketched a map of the
district that showed with workable accuracy the location of lakes and
streams, together with the location of Government and Hudson's Bay
Company lands. This done, he secured an Indian guide and proceeded to
lay out and blaze the route of the wagon road to the railway.

By the middle of May the snow had nearly disappeared, and the first of
June saw the rivers running free of ice. It was then that Wentworth
"borrowed" Sven Larson from the factor and dropped down Gods River in a
canoe to its confluence with the Shamattawa. Camp was made at the head
of the rapids. Thereafter for five days Hedin worked under Wentworth's
direction, while the engineer ran his levels and established his
contour. In the evenings as they sat by the campfire smoking, Hedin
preserved the same stolid silence that he had studiously observed since
the coming of Wentworth.

"Murchison says you know all about fur," Wentworth suggested one
evening. "And the finished fur? Do you know that, too--about, well,
for instance kolinsky, and nutria, and Russian sable?"

"Kolinsky and nutria are no good. We do not have them here. Russian
sable, and sea otter, and black fox, they are the best furs in the
world. We do not have them here, either, except once in a while a
black, or a silver fox."

"A coat of Russian sable would be very valuable?"

"Yes. Real Russian sable, dark, and well silvered, would be very
valuable."

"How much would one be worth?"

"Nobody can tell unless they can see it. It is all in the matching."

For a full minute Wentworth studied the face across the little fire,
the face with the unkempt beard, and the far-off, pondering eyes.

"I have a Russian sable coat," ventured Wentworth.

The factor's clerk gazed at him with unwinking blue eyes, and the head
wagged slowly. "