t, seven, six, five, four.

"Now!" he breathed.

His right foot lifted, his left stiffened, his body shot forward.

The next moment there was a sickening crash--the ice-pan had broken in
a thousand pieces. But the boy and the dog, saved by a timely leap,
lay prone upon the surface of the rocky cliff.

For some time the boy lay sprawled upon the rocky ledge motionless.
This last supreme effort had drawn out his last reserve of nervous
energy. Amid the shrill scream of grinding ice rising from the tossing
mass below, he lay as one whose ears are closed forever to sound.

The dog, with ears dropping, eyes intent, lay watching him. At last
his tail wagged gently to and fro--there had been a flutter of motion
in the boy's right hand. Meekly the dog crawled forward to lick the
glove that covered that hand with his rough tongue. At that the boy
raised himself to a sitting position, and, rubbing his eyes, stared
about him.

"Rover, old boy," he drawled at last, "that was what you might call a
close squeak."

The dog rose and wagged his tail.

"Rover," the boy said solemnly, "I took a long chance for you just
then. Why did I do it? If you'd been the leader of my team for
several winters before old age overtook you; if you'd maybe pulled me
out of some blizzard where I'd have frozen to death if it hadn't been
for your keen sense of smell, which enabled you to follow the trail,
there'd have been some sense to it. But you weren't and you didn't;
you're only a poor, old, heroic specimen someone has played traitor to
and deserted in old age. Well, that's enough of that; we're on land
now. What land is it? What are the people like? When do we eat?
That last question is most important for the moment. What say we try
scaling the cliff and then look about a bit?"

The dog barked his approval. Together they began scaling the cliff,
which at times appeared to confront them as an unsurmountable barrier
and at others offered a gently rising slope of shale and rock.

* * * * * *

When Lucile and Marian had made sure that there were no people in the
deserted native village, they returned to the mysterious bungalow.

"We've got to get in there," said Marian, "don't matter whose it is."

Searching about, she found a stout pole. With this she pried off a
board from a window, then another and another.

"Give me a lift," she said, raising one foot from the ground.

Once boosted up she