fter breakfast, Helen was startled by a brace of cracks like
those of a pistol. She started up.

"What was that? Some one fired----"

"No!" answered Stane quickly. "Just a couple of trees whose hearts have
burst with the cold. There will be no one abroad this weather."

But in that, as events proved, he was mistaken. For when, in the early
afternoon, wrapped in the fur garments which the girl had manufactured
at their old camp, they ventured forth, not twenty yards away from the
hut Stane came suddenly upon a broad snow-shoe trail. At the sight of
it he stopped dead.

"What is it?" asked the girl quickly.

"Some one has been here," he said, in a curious voice. Without saying
anything further he began to follow the trail, and within a few minutes
realized that whoever had made it had come down the lake and had been
so interested in the cabin as to walk all around it. The tracks of the
great webbed-shoes spoke for themselves and even Helen could read the
signs plainly.

"Whoever is it?" she asked in a hushed voice, looking first at the
sombre woods and then out on the frozen snow-wreathed lake.

Stane shook his head. "I haven't the slightest notion, but whoever it
was watched the cabin for a little time. He stood there on the edge of
the wood, as the deeper impression in the snow shows."

"Perhaps the owner whose palace we have usurped has returned."

Stane again shook his head. "No! He would have made himself known, and
besides he would most certainly have had a team of dogs with him.
Whoever the visitor was he came down the lake and he went back that
way."

"It is very mysterious," said Helen, looking up the frozen waste of the
lake.

"Yes," answered Stane, "but rather reassuring. We are not quite alone
in this wilderness. There must be a camp somewhere in the
neighbourhood, but whether of white men or of Indians one can only
guess."

"And which do you guess?" asked Helen quickly.

"Indians, I should say, for a white man would have given us a call."

"And if Indians, they may be friendly or otherwise?"

"Yes."

"Then," she said, with a little laugh, "we shall have to keep our eyes
lifting and bolt the door o' nights!"

"It will be as well," agreed Stane, as he began to circle round the
cabin again. "Indians are not always law-abiding, particularly in the
North here. In any case we must try and find out where this one comes
from, for if he is friendly we may be able to get dogs, and with dogs
our j