reawakened suspicion which flickered in Strangeways' eyes. "You won't go far with them; the moment you camp and that yellow-faced beast gets his chance, he'll chew your four dogs to pieces. That's what he's there for, it's my belief—he's playing Spurling's game. He'll take you fifty or a hundred miles from Murder Point, and there leave you stranded."

"What would you advise?" This was spoken in a quiet voice.

"I would advise you to wait here till the summer has come, and then to proceed by water."

"But on snow I can follow his trail, whereas travel by water leaves no traces."

"What does that matter? Instead of following him, let him return to you, as he did to-night. You've driven him up a blind alley on this Last Chance River; he can only go to the blank wall of the Bay, and then come back."

"He can reach the House of the Crooked Creek."

"And if he does, what of that? He'll be touching the blank wall then. They won't want him. The first question that they'll ask him will be, 'And what have[97] you come here for?' If he can't give a satisfactory account of himself, they'll place him under arrest. When you get news of that, you can go up there and fetch him."

[97]

"And if he doesn't get so far as that?"

"You can set out by canoe and drive him back, and back, till you come to the Bay, and he can go no further."

"He might hide, and I might pass him on the way—what then?"

"In that case he'd double back and come past Murder Point, trying to get out."

"In the meanwhile I should be a hundred, two hundred miles to the northwards, travelling towards the Bay on my fool's errand, and who would be here to capture him?"

"Why, I should."

"Precisely."

Granger started; the way in which that last word had been spoken had made Strangeways' meaning manifest. He blushed like a girl at the shame of it. "Surely you don't still distrust me? You don't think me such a sneak that, having got 

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