s and reeds that I disturbed would soon
straighten, which accounts for your losing my tracks. You wouldn't have
expected me to wade across the muskeg?"

"No," admitted Curtis; "I didn't."

"Why did you not return to Sebastian after being robbed of your horse and
money?" Jernyngham asked.

"Ah!" said Cyril with some constraint in his manner, "that's more
difficult to explain. To some extent it was a matter of temperament. I
had left the settlement after a painful and rather humiliating discovery;
you can understand that I was anxious to avoid my neighbors. Then I'd
been knocked out and robbed by the first rascal I fell in with. I hadn't
the courage to crawl back in my battered state and face the boys'
amusement; and there was something that appealed to me in the thought of
cutting loose and going on without a dollar, to see what I could do." He
smiled at his father and sister. "You know I had always rather eccentric
ideas."

Then he recounted his adventures along the railroad under the name of
Kermode, until Prescott interrupted him.

"I followed you to the abandoned claim in the mountains, where I had to
give it up. How did you make out after you struck south with the
prospector crank?"

"That was the most interesting part of the trip, but I could hardly
describe it. We crawled up icy rocks, found a river we could travel on
here and there, scrambled through brush that ripped our clothes and over
stones that cut our boots to bits, and finally came down by Quesnelle to
the Canadian Pacific main track."

"Loaded with worthless mineral specimens?"

Cyril laughed.

"They were pretty heavy, Jack. Once or twice I thought of dumping my
share of them, but it's fortunate that Hollin, who seemed to suspect my
intentions, kept his eye on me when I got played out. You see, an assayer
we took them to found that they were rich in lead and silver."

Prescott's astonishment was obvious and Cyril frankly enjoyed it.

"Well," he said, "the end of it was that I called on some of the mining
people in Vancouver--it seems they knew Hollin and had had enough of
him--but I left one office with a check for a thousand dollars, besides
retaining an interest in the claim. Hollin has gone back to see about its
development."

His father and sister looked as surprised as Prescott. One could imagine
that they found it difficult to conceive of Cyril's financial success,
but they offered him their congratulations, and soon afterward Curtis