llowed their flight she saw the darkly nodding
tops of the evergreens above her.

With the fire well under way, he took the coffee-pot to get water from
the river, and left her to fry the bacon. The fumes of the frying meat
wakened her at once, and brushed even the thought of her exhaustion
from her mind. She was hungry--ravenously hungry.

So she tended the bacon slices with care until they grew brown and
crisped and curled at the edges. After that she removed the pan from
the fire, and it was not until then that she began to wonder why Wilbur
was so long in returning with the water. The bacon grew cold; she
heated it again and was mightily tempted to taste one piece of it, but
restrained herself to wait for Dick.

Still he did not come. She stood up and called, her high voice rising
sharp and small through the trees. It seemed that some sound answered,
so she smiled and sat down. Ten minutes passed and he was still gone.
A cold alarm swept over her at that. She dropped the pan and ran out
from the trees.

Everywhere was the bright moonlight--over the wet rocks, and sand, and
glimmering on the slow tide of the river, but nowhere could she see
Wilbur, or a form that looked like a man. Then the moonlight glinted
on something at the edge of the river. She ran to it and found the
coffee-can half in the water and partially filled with sand.

A wild temptation to scream came over her, but the tight muscles of her
throat let out no sound. But if Wilbur were not here, where had he
gone? He could not have vanished into thin air. The ripple of the
water washing on the sand replied. Yes, that Current might have rolled
his body away.

To shut out the grim sight of the river she turned. Stretched across
the ground at her feet she saw clearly the impression of a body in the
moist sand.

CHAPTER XXVIII

A HINT OF WHITE

The heels had left two deeply defined gouges in the ground; there was a
sharp hollow where the head had lain, and a broad depression for the
shoulders. It was the impression of the body of a man--a large man
like Wilbur. Any hope, any doubt she might have had, slipped from her
mind, and despair rolled into it with an even, sullen current, like the
motion of the river.

It is strange what we do with our big moments of fear and sorrow and
even of joy. Now Mary stooped and carefully washed out the coffee-pot,
and filled it again with water higher up the bank; and turned back
toward t