grim conclusion that each passing hour was forcing upon them. They contrived to keep it up to and through the noonday séance with the cooking fire; but after that the barriers, on the young woman's part, went out with a rush. "I simply can't stand it any longer," she protested. "We must do something, Mr. [Pg 31] Prime. We can at least walk somewhere and carry the bits of provisions along with us. Why should we stay right in this one spot until we starve?" [Pg 31] "I am still clinging to the Grider supposition," Prime admitted. "If we move away from here he might not be able to find us." "It is only a supposition," she countered quickly. "You accept it, but, while I haven't anything better to offer, I cannot make it seem real." "If you throw Grider out of it, it becomes an absolutely impossible riddle." "I know; but everything is impossible. We are awake and alive and lost, and these are the only facts we can be sure of." Then she added: "It will be so much easier to bear if we are only doing something!" Prime had an uncomfortable feeling that a move would be a definite abandonment of the only reasonable hope; but he had no further argument to adduce, and the preparations for the move were quickly made. Though the young woman was the disbeliever in the Grider hypothesis, it was at her suggestion that Prime wrote a note on the back [Pg 32] of a pocket-worn letter and left it sticking in a cleft stake by the waterside; the note advertising the direction they were about to take. They had no plan other than to try to find the lake's outlet, and to this end they laid their course southward along the shore, dividing the small "tote-load" of dunnage at the young woman's insistence. [Pg 32] So long as they had the sandy lake margin for a path, the going was easy, but in a little time the beach disappeared in a rocky shore, with the forest crowding closely upon the water, and they were forced to make a long circuit inland. Still having the protective instinct, Prime "broke trail" handsomely for his companion, but, since he was something less than an athlete, the long afternoon of it told upon him severely; so severely, indeed, that he was glad to throw himself down upon the sands to rest when they finally came back to the lake on the shore of a narrow bay. "I didn't know before how much I lacked of being a real man," he admitted,
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