the sudden collision with bloody tragedy shocked him prodigiously. Out
of the welter of emotions he dug a single fixed and unalterable
decision. Come what might, his companion must be kept from all knowledge
of the duel and its ghastly outcome.

"Dear me! You look as if you had seen a ghost," was the way the battle
of concealment was opened when he came within the circle of firelight.
"Did you find any berries?"

Prime shook his head. "No, it was too dark," he said; "and, anyway, I'm
not sure there were any."

"Never mind," was the cheerful rejoinder. "We have enough without them,
and, really, I am beginning to get the knack of the pan-bread. If you
don't say it is better this evening--" She broke off suddenly. He had
sat down by the fire and was nursing his knees to keep them from
knocking together. "Why, what _is_ the matter with you? You are as pale
as a sheet."

"I--I stumbled over something and fell down," he explained hesitantly.
"It wasn't much of a fall, but it seemed to shake me up a good bit. I'll
be all right in a minute or two."

"You are simply tired to death," she put in sympathetically. "The long
tramp this afternoon was too much for you."

Prime resented the sympathy. He was not willing to admit that he could
not endure as much as she could--as much as any mere woman could.

"I'm not especially tired," he denied; and to prove it he began to eat
as if he were hungry, and to talk, and to make his companion talk, of
things as far as possible removed from the sombre heart of a Canadian
forest.

Immediately after supper he began to build another sleeping-shelter,
though the young woman insisted that it was ridiculous for him to feel
that he was obliged to do this at every fresh stopping-place. None the
less, he persevered, partly because the work relieved him of the
necessity of trying to keep up appearances. Fortunately, Miss Millington
confessed herself weary enough to go to bed early, and after she left
him Prime sat before the fire, smoking the dust out of his tobacco-pouch
and formulating his plan for the keeping of the horrid secret.

The plan was simple enough, asking only for time and a sufficient
quantity--and quality--of nerve. When he could be sure that his
camp-mate was safely asleep he would go back to the glade and dispose of
the two dead men in some way so that she would never know of their
existence alive or dead.

The waiting proved to be a terrific strain; the more so since the