othered by caution and
suspicion. After this he did not go ahead of Breault, but kept behind
him or abreast of him, within sound of the dipping pole. And every
minute his heart thumped expectantly, and he sniffed the new air for
signs of those he most desired to find.

Dawn was breaking in the sky when they came out of the swamp, and the
first flush of the sun was lighting up the east when Breault headed his
improvised craft for the sandbar upon which Nada and McKay had rested
many hours before.

Breault was tired, but his eyes lighted up when he saw the footprints
in the sand, and he chuckled--almost good humoredly. As a matter of
fact he was in a good humor. But one would not have reckoned it as such
in Breault. A hard man, the forests called him; a man with the hunting
instincts of the fox and the wolf and the merciless persistency of the
weazel--a man who lived his code to the last letter of the law, without
pity and without favoritism. At least so he was judged, and his hard,
narrow eyes, his thin lips and his cynically lined face seldom betrayed
the better thoughts within him, if he possessed any at all. In the
Service he was regarded as a humanly perfect mechanism, a bit of
machinery that never failed, the dreaded Nemesis to be set on the trail
of a wrong-doer when all others had failed.

But this morning, with every bone and muscle in him aching from his
long night of tedious exertion, the chuckle grew into a laugh as he
looked upon the telltale signs in the sand.

He stretched himself and his tired bones cracked.

Breault did not think aloud. But he was saying to himself.

"There, against that rock, Jolly Roger McKay sat There is the imprint
of only one person sitting. The girl was in his arms. Here are little
holes where her outstretched heels rested in the sand. She is wearing
shoes and not moccasins."

He grinned as he drew his service pack from the two-log cedar raft.

"Plenty of time now," he continued to think. "They are mine this
time--sure. They believe they have fooled me, and they haven't. That's
fatal. Always."

Not infrequently, when entirely alone, Breault let a little part of
himself loose, as if freeing a prisoner from bondage for a short time.
For instance, he whistled. It was not an unpleasant whistle, but rather
oddly reminiscent of tender things he remembered away back somewhere;
and as he fried his bacon and steamed a handful of desiccated potatoes
he hummed a song, also rather pl