disentangle it. Words shaped
themselves, Indian words which he had heard before on the guide's
tongue.

"_N'loan pes-saus, mok glint ont-aven,
Glint ont-aven, nosh morgun_."

These lines from the "Star Song," the song which Herb had learned from
his traitor chum, floated out to him upon Katahdin's breeze. They struck
young Farrar's ears in staggering tones, like a knell, the sadness of
which he could not at the moment understand. But he had a vague
impression that the mysterious singer in the deserted camp attached no
meaning to what he chanted.

"Look out, I say! I don't want to come a cropper here."

It was Dol's young voice which rang out shrilly among the mountain
echoes. Side by side with Cyrus, the boy had just gained the top of the
ridge when the guide suddenly backed upon him, Herb's great
shoulder-blade knocking him in the face, so that he had to plant his
feet firmly to avoid spinning back.

But Herb had heard that guttural crooning. Just now he could hear
nothing else.

Twice he made a heaving effort to speak, and the voice cracked in his
throat.

Then, as he sprang for the camp-door, four words stumbled from his
lips:--

"By thunder! it's Chris."

CHAPTER XXII.

THE OLD HOME-CAMP.

The silence which followed that ejaculation was like the hush of earth
before a thunder-storm.

Not a syllable passed the lips of the boys as they followed Herb into
the log hut, but feeling seemed wagging a startled tongue in each
finger-tip which convulsively pressed the rifles.

And not another articulate sentence came from the guide; only his throat
swelled with a deep, amazed gurgle as he reached the interior of the
shanty, and dropped his eyes upon the individual who raised that queer
chanting.

On a bed of withered spruce boughs, strewn higgledy-piggledy upon the
camp-floor--mother earth--lay the form of a man. Thin wisps of
blue-black hair, long untrimmed, trailed over his face and neck, which
looked as if they were carved out of yellow bone. His figure was
skeleton-like. His lips--the lips which at the entrance of the strangers
never ceased their wild crooning--were swollen and fever-scorched. His
black eyes, disfigured by a hideous squint, rolled with the sick fancies
of delirium.

Cyrus and the Farrars, while they looked upon him, felt that, even if
they had never heard Herb's exclamation, they would have had no
difficulty in identifying the creature, remembering that story which had