t Falls before returning up-river. Clare, waiting for what
she could not have told, had chosen to remain at the shack, and Mary
Moosa was not afraid to stay with her by daylight. Like Stonor, Mary
believed that the man had undoubtedly left the neighbourhood, and that
no further danger was to be apprehended from that quarter.

Stonor went along abstractedly, climbing over the obstructions or
cutting a way through, almost oblivious to his surroundings. His heart
was jealous and sore. His instinct told him that the man who had
prowled around the shack the night before was an evil-doer; yet Clare
persisted in exalting him to the skies. In his present temper it seemed
to Stonor as if Clare purposely made his task as hard as possible for
him. In fact, the trooper had a grievance against the whole world.

Suddenly he realized that his brain was simply chasing itself in
circles. Stopping short, he shook himself much like a dog on issuing
from the water. His will was to shake off the horrors of the past night
and his dread of the future. Better sense told him that only weakness
lay in dwelling on these things. Let things fall as they would, he would
meet them like a man, he hoped, and no more could be asked of him. In
the meantime he would not worry himself into a stew. He went on with a
lighter breast.

From the cutting in the trail Stonor saw that someone had travelled that
way a while before, probably during the previous season, for the cuts on
green wood were half-healed. It was clear, from the amount of cutting he
had been obliged to do, that this traveller was the first that way in
many years. Stonor further saw from the style of his axe-work that he
was a white man; a white man chops a sapling with one stroke clean
through: a red man makes two chops, half-way through on each side. This
was pretty conclusive evidence that Imbrie had first come from
down-river.

This trail had not been used since, and Stonor, remembering the
suggestion in Imbrie's diary that he frequently visited the falls,
supposed that he had some other way of reaching there. He determined to
see if it was practicable to make his way along the beach on the way
back.

The trail did not take him directly to the falls, but in a certain place
he saw signs of an old side-path striking off towards the river, and,
following this, he was brought out on a plateau of rock immediately
above the spot where the river stepped off into space. Here he stood for
a m