was now pitch dark and raining. The camp sat in strained silence.
Finally Margaret came over to her mother and whispered something in
her ear. A weary smile crossed Alice's lips; then she beckoned to
Holcomb, laid her hand on his arm, and looking up into his face said
in a broken voice:

"You _will_ look after Margaret, Mr. Holcomb, won't you, if--if
anything has happened?"

"All my life, Mrs. Thayor."

Before she could speak the girl leaned over and hid her face on her
mother's shoulder. A light broke over the mother's face; then she
found her voice.

"And it is true, Margaret?" she said, smoothing the girl's cheek.
"What will your father say?"

"He knows I love Billy," she whispered, as she threw her arms around
her mother's neck and burst into tears.

A grave and ominous anxiety now took possession of the camp. That
something must be done, and at once, to find Thayor, had become
evident as the night began to settle. But no man in the camp lagged.
Billy and the trapper were busy tearing long strips of yellow bark
from a birch tree for torches, while the Clown, who had been hurriedly
cutting two forked sticks, stood fitting them with the twisted
bark. For some moments the three woodsmen held a low and earnest
conversation together, Alice watching them with startled eyes. She
caught also the figure of the trapper and the old dog standing at the
limit of the firelight waiting for Holcomb, and the flare of the two
bark torches that the old man held in his hands.

At that instant the old dog sprang into the darkness beyond the
trapper, barking sharply. Holcomb, followed by Margaret, who had never
left his side since he had determined to go in search of her father,
rushed forward, following the waning light from the torches now
glimmering far ahead as the trapper leaped on after the old dog.

Alice, now left alone with Blakeman and Annette, sat peering into the
void, her ears open to every sound. Every now and then she would rise,
walk to the edge of the firelight, stand listening for a few moments
and sink back again on her seat by the embers.

Suddenly Blakeman rose to his feet, his hand cupped to his ear, his
whole body tense. His knowledge of the woods had taught him their
unusual sounds. Stepping quickly over the surrounding logs, he moved
to the edge of the darkness and listened, then walked quickly into the
blackness.

The dim flicker of approaching torches, like will-o'-the-wisps, now
flashed among the