obable."

Somewhat to his astonishment, the usually taciturn Jake broke in.

"You're wasting time! Vernon never struck this cache--he told the folks
at the post so. Worked with him once trail-cutting--what that man said
goes!"

"You never told me you knew Vernon!" exclaimed Lisle.

"Quite likely," Jake drawled. "It didn't seem any use till now."

For the first time since they landed, Nasmyth laughed--he felt that
something was needed to relieve the tension.

"If people never talked unless they had something useful to say, there
would be a marvelous change," he declared.

Lisle disregarded this, but he was a little less grave when he resumed:

"There's another point to bear in mind. Two of Gladwyne's party left him;
and of those two which would be the more likely to succumb to extreme
exertion, exposure, and insufficient food?"

"Against the answer you expect, there's the fact that Vernon made the
longer journey," Nasmyth objected.

"It doesn't count for much. Was Clarence Gladwyne accustomed to roughing
it and going without his dinner? Would you expect him to survive where
you would perish, even if you had a little more to bear?"

"No," confessed Nasmyth; "he's rather a self-indulgent person."

"Then, for example, could you march through a rough, snow-covered country
on as little food as I could?"

"No, again," answered Nasmyth. "You would probably hold out two or three
days longer than I could."

"Vernon was a stronger and tougher man than I am," Lisle went on. "Now,
without finding definite proof, which I hardly expected, there is, I
think, strong presumptive evidence that Vernon's story is correct."

"Yes," agreed Nasmyth, and added gravely: "Will you ever find the proof?"

"I think there's a way--it may be difficult; but I'm going right through
with this."

"What's your next move?"

"I've willingly laid my partner's story open to the only tests we can
impose. Now I'm going to do the same with Clarence Gladwyne's."

Nothing more was said, and turning away from the cache, they went back to
the canoe.

CHAPTER IV

A PAINFUL DECISION

Two days passed uneventfully, though Nasmyth was conscious of a growing
uneasiness during them; and then one evening they landed to search
another beach. They had less difficulty here, for small cedars and
birches crept down to the waterside and Jake found an ax-blaze on one.
After that, it was easy to locate the cache, and there were signs that it
had b