d that low laughter and looked up with surprise on
his face. The two men stood, side by side, kicking the embers about
before going to bed. It was ten o'clock--a late hour for hunters to be
still awake.

"What's ticklin' yer?" he asked in his ordinary tone, yet gravely.

"I--I was thinking of our little toy woods at home, just at that
moment," stammered Simpson, coming back to what really dominated his
mind, and startled by the question, "and comparing them to--to all
this," and he swept his arm round to indicate the Bush.

A pause followed in which neither of them said anything.

"All the same I wouldn't laugh about it, if I was you," Defago added,
looking over Simpson's shoulder into the shadows. "There's places in
there nobody won't never see into--nobody knows what lives in there
either."

"Too big--too far off?" The suggestion in the guide's manner was immense
and horrible.

Defago nodded. The expression on his face was dark. He, too, felt
uneasy. The younger man understood that in a _hinterland_ of this size
there might well be depths of wood that would never in the life of the
world be known or trodden. The thought was not exactly the sort he
welcomed. In a loud voice, cheerfully, he suggested that it was time for
bed. But the guide lingered, tinkering with the fire, arranging the
stones needlessly, doing a dozen things that did not really need doing.
Evidently there was something he wanted to say, yet found it difficult
to "get at."

"Say, you, Boss Simpson," he began suddenly, as the last shower of
sparks went up into the air, "you don't--smell nothing, do you--nothing
pertickler, I mean?" The commonplace question, Simpson realized, veiled
a dreadfully serious thought in his mind. A shiver ran down his back.

"Nothing but burning wood," he replied firmly, kicking again at the
embers. The sound of his own foot made him start.

"And all the evenin' you ain't smelt--nothing?" persisted the guide,
peering at him through the gloom; "nothing extrordiny, and different to
anything else you ever smelt before?"

"No, no, man; nothing at all!" he replied aggressively, half angrily.

Defago's face cleared. "That's good!" he exclaimed with evident relief.
"That's good to hear."

"Have _you?_" asked Simpson sharply, and the same instant regretted the
question.

The Canadian came closer in the darkness. He shook his head. "I guess
not," he said, though without overwhelming conviction. "It must've been
just th