broken country--sandhills and bluffs. About eight miles
on, the other trail runs in again."

"Are there any homesteads on the way?"

"Nothing near the trail. There's a shack where two fellows cutting
cordwood camp."

Prescott considered when he had thanked the man. He was tired and his
horse was far from fresh, but he understood that Wandle's team was in a
worse condition. There was a possibility of his overtaking him, if he
pushed on at once. Leaving the stable, he meant to walk a short distance
to ease his aching limbs, but he saw a mounted man trotting up the street
and called out as he recognized Stanton.

"I thought I might get news of you here," said the trooper, pulling up.
"Have you found out anything?"

Prescott told him what he had heard, and Stanton nodded.

"Then we had better get on. The horse I've got is pretty fresh."

In another minute or two they had left the lights of the settlement
behind and Prescott prepared for a third night on the trail. His eyes
were heavy, long exposure to extreme cold had had its effect on him, and
the warmth seemed to be dying out of his exhausted body. After a while
they came to a straggling clump of birches with blurred masses of taller
trees behind, where the trail broke in two. Stanton dismounted and struck
a few matches, examining the snow carefully.

"Nothing to show which way Wandle's gone," he reported. "Somebody's been
along with a bob-sled not long ago and rubbed out his tracks. Anyhow,
I'll take the shorter fork."

They separated; the trooper riding on in the moonlight and Prescott
entering the gloom of the trees. He soon found the trial remarkably
uneven. So far as he could make out, it skirted a number of low, thickly
timbered ridges, swinging sharply up and down. In places it slanted
awkwardly toward one edge; in others it was covered with stiff, dwarf
scrub. One or two of the descents to frozen creeks were alarmingly steep
and the Clydesdale stumbled now and then, but it kept its feet and
Prescott felt that, everything considered, he was making a satisfactory
pace. Stanton, he supposed, was two or three miles to the west of him,
following the opposite edge of the high ground, but there was nothing to
indicate which of them was the nearer to Wandle.

He rode on, wishing the light were better, for the faint gleam of the
moon among the trees confused his sight and made it difficult to
distinguish the trail, while to leave it might lead to his plunging do