faces that we'd no pull over him, because we were doing private work in
Thompson's stope and stealing Wilbraham's gold out of it. And--that
rather gave us the check."

"But--why? There wasn't six cents' worth of gold there to steal!"

Collins smiled with shameless simplicity. "I know. But stealing gold was
exactly what we were doing, only it wasn't in Thompson's old stope. We'd
have been caught with the goods on us though, if any one had fussed
round there to investigate. We found our way in here," he jerked his
head toward his amateur tunnel, "by accident, in Thompson's time, one
day when the stope happened to be empty; and we burrowed on to what
looked like the anticlinal, before we heard the stope shift coming and
had to slide out. But we'd seen enough to keep us burrowing. We couldn't
do much, even after Hutton ran the other tunnel half a mile down the
cliff and caught gold there; but we kind of slipped in, evenings, when
you missed us out of the bunk house"--he grinned again--"and got the
bearings of that vein. And you bet we had to find a way to stay with it;
it was too good to leave! We weren't going to work in Wilbraham's mine
just for our health and days' wages, when we'd struck our own gold. So
we reckoned we'd just--disappear. But we didn't get out as sharp as we
did simply on account of our own private affairs. Macartney-Hutton drew
a gun the day we had the row he lied to you about, and I guess we just
legged it out of Thompson's stope--by the front way!--in time to make
the bush with our lives on us. Macartney thought he'd scared us, and
we'd lit for Caraquet; but we lit back again after dark. We crawled in
here by our back entrance you haven't seen yet, and here we've been ever
since! We didn't confide in you, because you seemed pretty thick with
Macartney, if you come to think of it; and it seemed a hefty kind of a
lie, too, when you told Charliet you'd buried us. I rather think that's
all, till to-night----" his indifferent drawl stopped as if it were cut
off with a knife. "My God, Stretton," he jerked, "I'd forgotten! Was it
true--what Charliet told us to-night--about Dudley Wilbraham?"

I was eating stuff the silent Dunn had supplied, but I put the meat
down. "Wilbraham's killed," I heard my own voice say; and then told the
rest of it. How Paulette had found Dudley's chewed, wolf-doped cap, and
Marcia had found Dudley, silent in the silent bush, where the last wolf
was sneaking away. I would not hav