hand over the boy's
mouth, to stifle further questions.

"Keep still!" he whispered.

But Herb, who was, as usual, perched upon the "deacon's seat," leaned
forward, with a laugh which was more than half a snarl.

"Who stole it?" he echoed. "Why, the other fellow--my chum; the man whom
I carried for a mile on my back, through a snow-heaped forest, the first
time I saw him, when I had lugged him out of a heavy drift. _He_ stole
it, Kid, and a'most everything I owned with it."

[Illustration: THE CAMP ON MILLINOKETT LAKE.]

With a savage kick of his moccasined foot, the woodsman suddenly
assaulted a blazing log. It sent a shower of sparks aloft, and caused a
bright flame to shoot, rocket-like, from the heart of the fire, which
showed the guide's face. His fine eyes reminded Cyrus of Millinokett
Lake when a thunder-storm broke over it. Their gray was dark and
troubled; the black pupils seemed to shrink, as if a tempest beat on
them; fierce flashes of light played through them.

Muttering a half-smothered oath, Herb flung himself off his bench,
stamped across the cabin to the open camp-door, and passed into the
darkness outside.

The boys, who had been stretched out in comfortable positions, drew
themselves bolt upright, and sat aghast. They stared towards the
camp-door, murmuring disjointedly. Into the mind of each flashed a
remembrance of some story which Doctor Phil had told about a thieving
partner who once robbed Herb Heal.

"You've stirred up more than you bargained for, Dol," said Cyrus. "I
wish to goodness you hadn't been so smart with your questions."

But the words were scarcely spoken when the guide was again in their
midst, with a smile on his lips.

"It's best to let sleeping dogs lie, young one," he said, looking down
reassuringly on Dol, who was feeling dumfounded. "I guess you all think
I'm an awful bearish fellow. But if you had lived the lonely life of a
trapper, tramping each day through the dark woods till you were
leg-weary, visiting your steel traps and deadfalls, all to get a few
furs and make a few dollars; and turned up at camp one evening to find
that your partner had skipped with every skin you had procured, I reckon
'twould take you a plaguy long time to get over it."

"I'm pretty sure it would, old man," said Cyrus.

"And I minded the loss of the furs a sight less than I minded losing
that moose-head," continued Herb, taking his perch again upon the
"deacon's seat." "The hound too