nt most of last
month fussing over some bad places on the road, by the turn where I had
found my boy from Skunk's Misery, and I ought to have seen Thompson go
by. But the solution was simple. There was one Monday and Tuesday I had
my road gang off in the bush, on the opposite side from the Skunk's
Misery valley, getting stuff to finish a bit of corduroy. In those two
days I could have missed seeing Thompson, and I said so.

"You didn't miss much," Dudley returned carelessly. "This Macartney's a
long sight better man."

"Where'd you get him?" I was pretty sure it was not Macartney for whom
my dream girl had mistaken me in the dark, but there was no harm in
knowing all I could about him.

Dudley knocked the wind straight out of my half suspicion.

"Thompson sent him," he returned with a grin. "I told him to get
somebody. Oh, we parted friends all right, old Thompson and I! He saw,
just as I did, that he wasn't the man for the place. Macartney struck
that vein first go off, and that was recommendation enough for me. But
here's Thompson's, if you want to see it!" He extracted a folded letter
from a case.

It was written in Thompson's careful, back-number copperplate, perhaps
not so careful as usual, but his unmistakably. And once and for all I
dismissed all idea that it could have been Macartney who was tangled up
with Paulette Brown. Old Thompson's friends were not that sort, and he
vouched for knowing Macartney all his life. He was a well-known man,
according to Thompson, with a long string of letters after his name.
Thompson had come on him by accident, and sent him up at once, before he
was snapped up elsewhere.

"Thompson seems to have got a move on in sending up his successor,"
said I idly. "When did he write this?" For there was no envelope, and
only Montreal, with no date, on the letter.

"Dunno--first day he got to Montreal, it says," carelessly. "Come along
and have a look at the workings. I want you to get log shelters built as
quick as you can build them--we don't want to have to dig out the new
tunnel mouth every time it snows. After that you can go to Caraquet with
what gold we've got out and be gone as long as you please. Now, we may
have snow any day."

I nodded. The winter arrives for good at La Chance in November, and
besides the exposed tunnel mouth, there was no shelter over the ore
platform at the mill. This year the snow was late, but there was no
counting on that. And I blinked as I went out