ce was that of a man who has
bad news but, by intense effort, shows it not in his countenance, but
keeps it locked up in his heart. Few and yet searching were the words
uttered at the camp fire as each one had declared to Mustagan that there
had been no fresh signs. He himself had not given any answer, and, by
asking questions of the others, had thus thrown off suspicion as
regarded himself. But nevertheless he had seen signs, and what he had
seen had nearly driven him wild. But darkness had come on him almost
suddenly from the arising up of a black cloud in the west, and so, in
spite of all his experience and anxiety, he had been compelled to return
shortly after making this startling discovery. What he had seen had so
alarmed him that he dare not tell, even to Mr Ross.

Very sad, indeed, was that second night around the camp fire. Mr and
Mrs Ross were nearly broken-hearted. Frank, Alec, and Sam spent the
night in sleepless sorrow. The Indians, who all dearly loved the lost
little ones, sat back in the gloom and were still and quiet. A kind of
stupor seemed to be over them all, with one exception, and, strange to
say, that one was Mustagan. Sharp eyes were on him, and some wondered
why he was so strangely agitated and was so restless and excited.

A little after midnight he abruptly sprang up, and speaking to Big Tom
and a couple of other Indians they all withdrew some distance back into
the darkness of the forest. To them in quiet tones, so as not to be
heard by the sorrowing ones at the camp fire, Mustagan told what he had
seen just as the darkness had set in. When they heard his story they
were as much excited as was he.

His story was this: he had pushed on in the direction he had selected in
the hunt for the children, and toward evening he had reached a part of
the country where the berries were very plentiful. Here he had found
traces that bears were numerous, and as they are fond of these berries
they had been feasting on them. This, of course, alarmed him, and so he
cautiously began making a circle around this place, and at length, in a
depression in the forest, he found the dried-up channel of a creek. He
cautiously hurried along on the dry sands, and, after going on only a
few hundred yards, he found a number of fresh tracks, not only of bears
that had recently crossed but also among them the footsteps of the lost
children!

Three Boys in the Wild North Land--by Egerton Ryerson Young