imed.

Before them was a place where a man had camped for the night.

"He's travelling!" cried Sam.

This exploded the theory that the trail had been made by the Indian to
whom the trapping rights of the district belonged. At once the two men
began to spy here and there eagerly, trying to reconstruct from the
meagre vestiges of occupation who the camper had been and what he had
been doing.

The condition of the fire corroborated what the condition of the trail
had indicated. Probably the man had passed about three days ago. The
nature of the fire proclaimed him an Indian, for it was small and round,
where a white man's is long and hot. He had no dogs; therefore his
journey was short, for, necessarily, he was carrying what he needed on
his back. Neither on the route nor here in camp were any indications
that he had carried or was examining traps; so the conclusion was that
this trip was not merely one of the long circles a trapper sometimes
makes about the limits of his domain. What, then, was the errand of a
single man, travelling light and fast in the dead of winter?

"It's the man we're after," said Sam, with conviction. "He's either
taken the alarm, or he's visiting."

"Look," called the girl from beneath the wide branches of a spruce.

They went. Beneath a lower limb, whose fan had protected it from the
falling snow, was the single clear print of a snow-shoe.

"Hah!" cried Sam, in delight, and fell on his knees to examine it. At
the first glance he uttered another exclamation of pleasure, for, though
the shoe had been of the Ojibway pattern, in certain modifications it
suggested a more northerly origin. The toes had been craftily upturned,
the tails shortened, the webbing more closely woven.

"It's Ojibway," induced Sam, over his shoulder, "but the man who made it
has lived among the Crees. That fits Jingoss. Dick, it's the man we're
after!"

It was by now almost noon. They boiled tea at the old camp site, and
tightened their belts for a stern chase.

That afternoon the head wind opposed them, exasperating, tireless in its
resistance, never lulling for a single instant. At the moment it seemed
more than could be borne. Near one o'clock it did them a great despite,
for at that hour the trail came to a broad and wide lake. There the snow
had fallen, and the wind had drifted it so that the surface of the ice
was white and smooth as paper. The faint trail led accurately to the
bank--and was obliterated.