on, who had eaten very little the previous evening, became
conscious of an unpleasant stitch in his side; but they pushed on
without flagging, urged by a growing anxiety. At length the ground,
which was a little clearer, rose sharply in front of them. Weston
pulled up the pack-horse and looked significantly at Devine, who
nodded.

"Yes," he assented, "he said a low divide. The lake lay just beyond
it."

Then he cast about with his eyes fixed on the loose gravel over which
they had scrambled, until he came to a spot where a wide patch of
half-rotted needles lay beneath another belt of pines.

"He stopped here and sat down," he commented. "Seemed to have had some
trouble in pulling out again. I don't like those footsteps. You and I
don't walk like that."

"Get on," said Weston, sharply, and, turning, struck the horse.

The sun was overhead when they scrambled, gasping, over the crest of
the divide and looked down into another long, winding hollow. Then
they stopped again and looked hard at each other, for the hollow
seemed filled with forest, and there was nowhere any shimmer of
shining water.

"He can't be far ahead. Went through those vines in front of you,"
said Devine.

Then ensued an hour's wild scramble through undergrowth in shade,
until they broke out, dripping with perspiration, from the gloom among
the pines into a comparatively open space on the edge of a wide belt
of willows. They left the horse tethered on the outskirts of the
latter; and twenty minutes afterward Devine, who had scrambled up and
down among the undergrowth, stopped suddenly.

"Come here," he cried with a suggestive hoarseness. "We're through
with this trail."

He was standing waist-deep among the tangled brushwood, and it was a
minute before Weston smashed through it to his side. Then he, too,
stopped and started, for he saw a huddled object in tattered duck
lying face downward at his comrade's feet. The latter made a little
gesture when he met Weston's eyes.

"We'll make sure," he said quietly. "Still, you see how he's lying."

Weston dropped on his knees, and with some difficulty turned the
prostrate figure over. Then he took off his battered hat and looked up
at Devine with it in his hand. The latter nodded.

"Yes," he said, "he has pulled out once for all. Started two or three
hours ago on a trail we can't pick up yet."

They drew back a little and sat down heavily on a ledge of stone, for
the sight of the huddled figure