ssion came on the Indian's face. For a moment he stood
considering the problem, then he shook his head gravely.

"I not know."

"We must get back to the camp at once, Joe. We must find out if Miss
Yardely has returned. We know now that she is alive, and at all costs
we must find her. We will start at once for there is no time to lose."

He turned on his heel and led the way back to the canoe, and half an
hour later they were paddling upstream towards the junction of the
rivers, the Indian grave and imperturbable; Ainley with a puzzled,
anxious look upon his handsome face.

CHAPTER V

A BRAVE RESCUE

When Hubert Stane took stock of his position, after his captors had
left him, he found himself in a country which was strange to him, and
spent the best part of a day in ascertaining his whereabouts. The flow
of the wide river where the camp had been pitched told him nothing, and
it was only after he had climbed a high hill a mile and a half away
from the river that he began to have any indication of his whereabouts.
Then with the country lying before him in a bird's-eye view he was able
to learn his position. There was more than one river in view, and a
chain of small lakes lay between one of them and the river where he had
been left by his captors. From the last of those lakes a long portage,
such as had been made on the last day but one of the journey, would
bring them to a river which a few miles away joined the river on the
bank of which he had been left to shift for himself. Studying the
disposition of the country carefully, he reached the conclusion that by
a roundabout journey he had been brought to the river on the upper
reaches of which he had his permanent camp; and as the conviction grew
upon him, he made his way back to the canoe, and began to work his way
upstream.

As he paddled, the problem of his deportation exercised his mind; and
nowhere could he find any explanation of it, unless it had to do with
Miskodeed. But that explanation failed as he recalled the words of her
father: "It is an order." Who had given the order? He thought in turn
of the factor, of Sir James Yardely, of Gerald Ainley. The first two
were instantly dismissed, but the thought of Ainley remained fermenting
in his mind. It was an odd coincidence that he should have been
attacked whilst awaiting Ainley's coming, and in view of his one-time
friend's obvious reluctance to an interview and of his own urgent
reasons for desiri