But everything was
gone. The sun had destroyed his last hope.

He was glad that Mukoki and Wabigoon were at the foot of the ridge,
for he knew that his despair almost brought tears to his eyes,
Minnetaki's fate was in his hands--and he had failed. He dreaded to
tell his companions, to let them see his face. For once in his life,
though he was as courageous a youth as ever lived, Roderick Drew
almost wished that he was dead.

Suddenly, as in their hopeless search for some familiar object Rod's
eyes traveled again over the endless waste of snow, he saw, far away,
something that glittered in the morning sun like a pane of glass, and
from his lips there fell a low exultant cry. He remembered now that he
had seen that strange gleam before, that he had gone straight to it
from the ridge and had found it to be a sheet of crystal ice frozen
to the side of a rock from above which the water of a spring gushed
forth. Without waiting for his companions he hurried down the
ridge and sped like a deer across the narrow plain at its foot. A
five-minute run brought him to the rock, and for a moment he paused,
his heart almost choking him in its excitement. Just beyond this he
had first encountered the strange trail. There were no signs of it
left in the snow, but he saw other things which led him on: a huge
rock thrusting itself out of the chaos of white, a dead poplar which
stood in his path, and at last, half a mile ahead, the edge of a dense
forest.

He turned and waved his arms wildly to Mukoki and Wabigoon, who were
far behind. Then he ran on, and when he reached the forest he waved
his arms again, and his joy was flung back in a thrilling shout to his
comrades. There was the log on which Minnetaki had been forced to sit
while awaiting the pleasure of her savage captors; he found the very
spot where her footprint had been in the snow, close to a protruding
stub! The outlaw Indians and their captives had rested here for a
brief spell, and had built a fire, and so many feet had beaten the
snow about it that their traces still remained.

He pointed to these signs as Mukoki and Wabigoon joined him.

For several minutes no one of the three spoke a word. Crouched over
until his eyes were within a foot of the snow the old pathfinder
examined every inch of the little clearing in which the Woongas had
built their fire, and when at last he drew himself erect his face
betrayed the utmost astonishment.

The boys saw that in those faint