At the half-conscious moment of awakening Prime had a confused impression that he must have gone to bed leaving the electric lights turned on full-blast. Succeeding impressions were even more disconcerting. It seemed that he had also gone to bed with his clothes on; that the bed was unaccountably hard; that the pillow had borrowed the characteristics of a pillory. Sitting up to give these chaotic conclusions a chance to clarify themselves, he was still more bewildered. That which had figured as

Lucetta Millington —she had told Prime her name on the tramp to the northward—sat down in the sand, elbows on knees and her chin propped in her hands. "You say 'aeroplane' as if it suggested something familiar to you, Mr. Prime," she prompted. Truly it did suggest something to Prime, and for a moment his mouth went dry. Grider, the man he was to have met in Quebec, was a college classmate, a harebrained young barbarian, rich, an outdoor fanatic, an owner of fast yachts, a driver of fast cars, an

The dawn of the second morning was much like that of the first, cool and crystal clear, and with the sun beating out a pathway of molten gold across the mirror-like surface of the solitary lake. Prime bestirred himself early, meaning to get the breakfast under way single-handed while Miss Millington slept. But the young woman who had described herself as being "fit" had stolen a march upon him. He was frying the bacon when she came skimming up the beach with her hair flying. "I got up early and

Prime made his way to the camp-fire at the lake edge, a prey to many disturbing emotions. Having lived a life practically void of adventure, the sudden collision with bloody tragedy shocked him prodigiously. Out of the welter of emotions he dug a single fixed and unalterable decision. Come what might, his companion must be kept from all knowledge of the duel and its ghastly outcome. "Dear me! You look as if you had seen a ghost," was the way the battle of concealment was opened when he came with

Prime awoke unrefreshed at the moment when the morning sun was beginning to gild the tops of the highest trees, to find his campmate up and busying herself housewifely over the breakfast fire. "You looked so utterly tired and worn out I thought I'd let you sleep as long as you could," she offered. "Are you feeling any better this morning?" "I'm not sick," he protested, wincing a little in spite of himself in deference to the stiffened thews and sinews. "You mustn't be," she argued cheerfully. "T

On the fifth morning—their third at the peninsula camp—Prime registered a solemn vow to make this the last day of the entirely unnecessary delay. More and more he was tormented by the fear that the dead men might escape from their weightings and rise to become a menace to Lucetta's sanity or his own; and, though he had been given the best possible proof that his companion was above reproach in the matter of calm courage and freedom from hysteria, he meant to take no chances—for her or for himsel

At the disappearance of the canoe Prime called the halt which the black darkness was insisting upon, and they made their way back in the teeth of the storm to the camp-fire. In a few minutes the summer squall had blown itself out, with scarcely enough rain to make a drip from the trees. Weary as he was, Prime took the axe, searched until he found a pine stump, and from it hewed the material for a couple of torches. With these for light they set out doggedly down-stream in search of their lost ho

At the foot of the long portage which had closed the week for them the two voyagers found the course of their river changing again to the southeastward, and were encouraged accordingly. In addition to the changing course the stream was taking on greater volume, and, while the rapids were not so numerous, they were more dangerous, or at least they looked so. By this time they were acquiring considerable skill with the paddles, together with a fine, woodcrafty indifference to the hardships. In the

Though the castaways had not especially intended to observe the day of rest, they did so, the Sunday dawning wet and stormy, with lowering clouds and foggy intervals between the showers to make navigation extrahazardous. When the rain settled into a steady downpour they pulled the canoe out of water, turning it bottom-side up to serve as a roof to shelter them. In the afternoon Prime took one of the guns and went afield, in the hope of finding fresh meat of some sort, though it was out of season

It is a trite saying that even the weakest strand in the cable never knows how much it can pull until the demanding strain comes. As a young woman with athletic leanings, Lucetta had had arduous drillings in first-aid, and had drilled others. If Prime had been merely drowned she would have known precisely what to do. But the broken head was a different matter. Nevertheless, when her own exhaustion was a little assuaged, she essayed the first-aid. Dragging the hapless one a little farther from th

Though she had formed her resolution with a fair degree of self-reliance, Lucetta Millington soon found that she had set herself a task calling for plenty of fortitude and endurance. Beyond the circle of firelight the shadows of the forest gloomed forbiddingly. They had seen but little of the wild life of the woods in their voyagings thus far, but now it seemed to be stirring uneasily on all sides of the lonely camp-fire. Once some large-hoofed animal went crashing through the underbrush toward

For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Prime broke out in a sardonic laugh. "That is a heavenly prospect for dinner, supper, breakfast, and dinner all rolled into one, isn't it, now? If there is anything left in the canoe, it's soaked to a pulp—to say nothing of the fact that we can't get to it. How are we going to raft ourselves over there without the axe?" Lucetta went down to the margin of the pond-like reach and tested its depth with a tossed stone. "It is deep," she said, "swimming-deep.

Prime whittled through the better part of the succeeding forenoon on the paddles, and for the midday bread Lucetta tried her domestic-science hand upon the dried and reground flour. Not to draw too fine a comparison, the paddles were the better success, though the bread was eatable. In the afternoon the man of all work, with Lucetta for consulting engineer, tackled the broken canoe. There was no lack of materials with which to make the repairs if they had only known how to use them. Attempts to

The next morning Prime waited until after breakfast before telling Lucetta about the visit of the intruder, the postponement basing itself upon a very natural disinclination to re-align himself, even constructively, with such a brutal humorist as Watson Grider. Indeed, when he told the story, he omitted to mention the barbarian's name; would never have mentioned it if Lucetta had not pushed him into a corner. "You say you saw the man; was it a stranger, or some one you knew?" she questioned. "I

On a morning which Prime, consulting his notched stick, named as the twenty-fourth of July, they gave the canoe patches another daubing of pitch for good luck, relaunched their argosy, loaded the dunnage, and began to learn the art of paddling anew—the relearning being made strictly necessary by the new green-wood paddles. From a boisterous mill-race in its upper reaches, their river had now subsided into a broad stream with a current so leisurely that they had to paddle continuously to make any

Prime leaned against a tree and took a full minute for a grasping of the new situation. "I more than half believe you are right," he admitted at length. Then, with a crabbed laugh: "If there is any bigger dunce on earth than I am I should like to meet him—just as a matter of curiosity. I'll never brag on my imagination after this. I could see plainly enough that the fellow was fairly eaten up with suspicion, and it would have been so easy to have invented a plausible lie to satisfy him." "Don't

The dawning of the second day in the camp under the great spruces found Prime still struggling desperately with the problem of what to do. Lucetta's condition seemed to be rather worse than better. There was the usual morning abatement of the fever, but she was evidently growing weaker. Prime's too vivid imagination pictured an impending catastrophe, and the canoe thief, no less than Watson Grider, came in for wordless and despairing maledictions. If the canoe had not been stolen they might by n

If she had not known it before, Lucetta was to learn now that sickness of any sort is but a poor preparation for a battle of anxiety and endurance. On the one other occasion when she had been thrown upon her own resources Prime had been at least visibly present, and his helplessness had given her strength to fight off the terrors. But now she was alone and the terrors pressed thickly. What if something had happened to the rabbit-hunter? She knew his utter lack of gun dexterity, and her terrified

Prime stood up, spreading his empty hands in reasonable token of submission. "If you are an officer of the law we have no notion of resisting you," he said placably. "What is the charge against us?" "Ye'll be knowin' that weel enough, I'm thinkin'. Whaur's Indian Jules and the Cambon man? Maybe ye can tell me that! Aiblins ye'd better not, though. I'll gie ye fair warnin' that whatever ye say'll be used against ye." There seemed to be nothing for it but an unconditional surrender. Prime looked t

Prime had often made his fictional heroes "see red" in exceptionally vigorous crises, and he was now able to verify the colorful figure of speech in his own proper person. Like a submerging wave the recollection of all that the heartless joke might have meant to a pair of helpless victims—of all that it had actually entailed in hardships and peril and sickness—rushed over him as he faced the handsome young giant at the wheel of the motor-cruiser. "So it was you, after all!" he gritted. Then: "Th

Mr. Watson Grider was not alone when they found him. He was sharing a sofa in the public parlor with an elderly little gentleman whose winter-apple face was decorated with mutton-chop whiskers and wreathed in smiles—the smiles of a listener who has just heard a story worth retailing at the dinner-table. The two stood up when Prime led his companion into the room, and Grider did the honors. "Miss Millington, let me introduce Mr. Shellaby, an old friend of my father's and the senior member of the