lley. The animal evidently had not been long out of winter
quarters, for it looked starved, and its fur was tattered and rusty.
The moment the bear caught sight of him, it vanished like a dark streak.

Fred found no trace that afternoon of blue clay, or, indeed, of any
clay, but he happened upon something that caused him some apprehension.
It was a steel trap, lying on the open ground, battered and rusted as
if it had been there for some time. Scattered round it were some bones
that he guessed had belonged to a lynx. Apparently the animal had been
caught in the trap, which was of the size generally used for martens,
had broken the chain from its fastening, and had traveled until it had
either perished from starvation or had been killed by wolves.

Although rusty, the trap was still in working condition, and Fred,
somewhat uneasy, took it along with him. Some one had been trapping in
that district recently, perhaps during the last winter; was the
stranger also looking for diamonds?

With frequent glances at his compass Fred kept zigzagging to and fro,
and finally came out on the river again; but he was still a long way
from camp, and he did not reach the head of the cataract until nearly
sunset.

Horace had already come in, covered with mud and swollen with fly bites.

"What luck?" cried Fred, eagerly.

His brother shook his head. He had encountered the same sort of rough
country as Fred; and to add to his troubles, he had got into a morass,
from which he had escaped in a very muddy condition.

Then Fred produced the trap and told of his finding it and of his
fears. The boys examined it and tested its springs. Horace took a
more cheerful view of the matter.

"The Ojibywas always trap through here in the winter," he said. "The
owner of that trap is probably down at Moose Factory now. Besides, the
lynx might have traveled twenty or thirty miles from the place where it
was caught."

In spite of the failure of the day's work they all felt hopeful; but
they resolved to push on farther before doing any more prospecting.

The next morning they launched the canoe, and for four days more faced
the river. Each day the work was harder. Each day they had a
succession of back-breaking portages; sometimes they were able to pole
a little; they hauled the canoe for hours by the tracking-line, and in
those four days they traveled scarcely thirty miles.

On the last day they met with a serious misfortune. While the