the evening's work,-which included no mention

re Billy kept his stores. It had to be put in another wagon for Caraquet, anyhow; and besides, I was not going on to Caraquet in the morning. The gold was safe with Billy, and there were other places that needed visiting first. There was no hope of getting at the ugly business that had brewed up at La Chance through Paulette Brown, or Collins either; since one

he way back with you,

r gold-bronze hair shining over the sable collar of Dudley's coat. I fanci

ly. "You needn't come with us. There won't be any wolves in

was about the most capable lady I had ever met. She was big-boned, hard-faced and profane; and usually left Billy to look after the house while she attended to a line of

would be. But on the top of the hill I bade good-by to my dream girl,-who was not mine, and was going back to Dudley. It was all I could manage to do i

nt as death there in the cold gray morning, with the frost-fog clinging in the somber hemlocks, and the swamp frozen so solid that my moccasins never left a mark. No one

a hunting one. If Collins had killed the beast he had waited there long enough to let an hour pass before he took his knife out of its throat: so he had been there when we raced by,-which was all I wanted to know, except where he had gone since. As for the other thing I found, it was behind the hemlocks wh

ater I found another spatter of blood on my corduroy road,-and as I looked at it my own blood boiled. There was not only no one but that young devil Collins who could have lain in wait for me; b

do a little still hunting round Skunk's Misery. If Collins had had that bottle of devil's brew at La Chance he had got it from Skunk's Misery

d of a motor car that would have reduced the twenty-seven miles to Ca

aquet over the frozen ruts of that same road; and another hour to hand over Dudley's gold

over a bundle of letters for La Chance. There were three for Marcia, and one-in old Thompson's back-number copperplate-for Dudley. There were no letters for Paulette Brown or myself, but perhaps neither of us had expected any. I know I hadn't. I gave the Wilbr

ishing the twenty miles through the bush from Caraquet to Skunk's Misery. Aside from the fact that I had no desire to adver

as all stones: gravel stones, little stones, stones as big as cabs and as big as houses; and, hunched up among them like lean-tos, hidden away among the rocks and the pine trees growing up from among the rocks wherever they could find root-hold, were the houses of the Skunk's Misery people. There was no pretense of a street or a village: there were just houses,-if they deserved even that name. How many there were I co

ding tracks, between rocks and under them, sometimes a foot wide and sometimes six, that Skunk's Misery used for roads. What its citizens lived on, I had never been able to guess. Caraquet said it was on wolf bounties,-which was another thing that had set me thinking about the bottle I had spilt on my clothes. If Collins or Dunn had got a similar bottle there I mean

was not a sign of a stranger in the place, or a soul about. And judging from the darkness and the quiet, all the fat-faced, indifferent women were in bed and asleep, and the shiftless rats of men were still away. There were no dogs to ba

her house, and jabbered gratitude as I had never thought any Skunk's Misery woman could jabber. And she did not look like one, either; she was handsome, in a haggard, vicious way, and she was not old. I did not think myself that her son looked particularly recovered. He lay like a log on his spruce-bough bed, awake and conscious but wholly speechless,

rom any one. She had found it standing in the sun beside one of the rocks, and stolen it, supposing it was gin. When she found it was not she took it for some sort of liniment; and put it where I had knocked it over on myself. She had never seen nor heard of any more of it. But of course it might have belonged to

woods at the lower end of Lac Tremblant, trapping or robbing traps as seemed good to him, and paying back interruptions with such interest that no one was keen to interfer

o one had dared to go into it. She could show it to me, but she was sure he had had nothing to do with that liniment, if I wanted any more. After which she relapsed into indifference, or I thought so

the one bottle the Frenchwoman's son might or might not have left there; certainly nothing about Collins ever having got hold of any; and if I had meant to spend the rest of the night in Skunk's Misery I saw no particul

g. I cut down enough pine boughs to make a bed under me, shut the door of the deserted house-that I knew enough of the Frenchwoman

it was the waning morning moon that woke me, and the hut was silent as the grave. I picked up the pine-bough bed I had slept on and carried it into the bush with me far enough to throw it down where it would tell no tales-I did not know why I did it, but I was to be glad-tightened up my belt, and took a short cut through the thick bush to Billy Jones's stables, with nothing to show for my day's and night's work but a dead wolf, a stai

eamsters jumped as if they had been shot. But

he said, stolidly too, "

g forward. What I thought was that here was the man who had left the blood in the swamp when Paulette's bullet hit him, and that I

id in my turn,

ark body, was Thompson, our old superintendent, who only six weeks ago had left the La Chance min

was the only th