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“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 stopped–dead!”

“And where you heered him callin’ an’ caught the stench, an’ all the rest of the wicked entertainment,” cried Hank, with a volubility that betrayed his keen distress.

“And where your excitement overcame you to the point of producing illusions,” added Dr. Cathcart under his breath, yet not so low that his nephew did not hear it.

* * * * *

It was early in the afternoon, for they had traveled quickly, and there were still a good two hours of daylight left. Dr. Cathcart and Hank lost no time in beginning the search, but Simpson was too exhausted to accompany them. They would follow the blazed marks on the trees, and where possible, his footsteps. Meanwhile the best thing he could do was to keep a good fire going, and rest.

But after something like three hours’ search, the darkness already down, the two men returned to camp with nothing to report. Fresh snow had covered all signs, and though they had followed the blazed trees to the spot where Simpson had turned back, they had not discovered the smallest indication of a human being–or for that matter, of an animal. There were no fresh tracks of any kind; the snow lay undisturbed.

It was difficult to know what was best to do, though in reality there was nothing more they could do. They might stay and search for weeks without much chance of success. The fresh snow destroyed their only hope, and they gathered round the fire for supper, a gloomy and despondent party. The facts, indeed, were sad enough, for Defago had a wife at Rat Portage, and his earnings were the family’s sole means of support.