so easy
to be wise in the explanation of an experience one has not personally
witnessed. "A kind of desolate and terrible odor is the only way I can
describe it," he concluded, glancing at the features of the quiet,
unemotional man beside him.

"I can only marvel," was the reply, "that under the circumstances it did
not seem to you even worse." The dry words, Simpson knew, hovered
between the truth, and his uncle's interpretation of "the truth."

* * * * *

And so at last they came to the little camp and found the tent still
standing, the remains of the fire, and the piece of paper pinned to a
stake beside it--untouched. The cache, poorly contrived by inexperienced
hands, however, had been discovered and opened--by musk rats, mink and
squirrel. The matches lay scattered about the opening, but the food had
been taken to the last crumb.

"Well, fellers, he ain't here," exclaimed Hank loudly after his fashion.
"And that's as sartain as the coal supply down below! But whar he's got
to by this time is 'bout as unsartain as the trade in crowns in t'other
place." The presence of a divinity student was no barrier to his
language at such a time, though for the reader's sake it may be severely
edited. "I propose," he added, "that we start out at once an' hunt for'm
like hell!"

The gloom of Defago's probable fate oppressed the whole party with a
sense of dreadful gravity the moment they saw the familiar signs of
recent occupancy. Especially the tent, with the bed of balsam branches
still smoothed and flattened by the pressure of his body, seemed to
bring his presence near to them. Simpson, feeling vaguely as if his
world were somehow at stake, went about explaining particulars in a
hushed tone. He was much calmer now, though overwearied with the strain
of his many journeys. His uncle's method of explaining--"explaining
away," rather--the details still fresh in his haunted memory helped,
too, to put ice upon his emotions.

"And that's the direction he ran off in," he said to his two companions,
pointing in the direction where the guide had vanished that morning in
the grey dawn. "Straight down there he ran like a deer, in between the
birch and the hemlock...."

Hank and Dr. Cathcart exchanged glances.

"And it was about two miles down there, in a straight line," continued
the other, speaking with something of the former terror in his voice,
"that I followed his trail to the place where--it