Dick looked at his companion a little bewildered.

"Why, you must know as well as I do," he said, "somebody stepped on top of that log with snow-shoes, and it's snowed since."

"Yes, but who?" insisted Sam.

"The trapper in this district, of course."

"Sure; and let me tell you this,--that trapper is the man we're after. That's his trail."

"How do you know?"

"I'm sure. I've got a hunch."

Dick looked sceptical, then impressed. After all, you never could tell what a man might not learn out in the Silent Places, and the old woodsman had grown gray among woods secrets.

"We'll follow the trail and find his camp," pursued Sam.

"You ain't going to ambush him?" inquired Dick.

"What's the use? He's the last man we have to tend to in this district, anyway. Even if it shouldn't be Jingoss, we don't care if he sees us. We'll tell him we're travelling from York to Winnipeg. It must be pretty near on the direct line from here."

"All right," said Dick.

They set themselves to following the trail. As the only persistences of it through the last storm were to be found where the snow-shoes had left deep notches on the fallen timber, this was not an easy matter. After a time the affair was simplified by the dogs. Dick had been breaking trail, but paused a moment to tie his shoe. The team floundered ahead. After a moment it discovered the half-packed snow of the old trail a foot below the newer surface, and, finding it easier travel, held to it. Between the partial success at this, and an occasional indication on the tops of fallen trees, the woodsmen managed to keep the direction of the fore-runner's travel.

Suddenly Dick stopped short in his tracks.

"Look there!" he exclaimed.

Before them was a place where a man had camped for the night.

"He's travelling!" cried Sam.

This exploded the theory that the trail had been made by the Indian to whom the trapping rights of the district belonged. At once the two men began to spy here and there eagerly, trying to reconstruct from the meagre vestiges of occupation who the camper had been and what he had been doing.

The condition of the fire corroborated what the condition of the trail had indicated. Probably the man had passed about three days ago. The nature of the fire proclaimed him an Indian, for it was small and round, where a white man's is long and hot. He had no dogs; therefore his journey was short, for, necessarily, he was carrying what he needed on his back. Neither on the route nor here in camp were any indications that he had carried or was examining traps; so the conclusion was that this trip was not merely one of the long circles a trapper sometimes makes about the limits of his domain. What, then, was the errand of a single man, travelling light and fast in the dead of winter?

"It's the man we're after," said Sam, with conviction. "He's either taken the alarm, or he's visiting."

"Look," called the girl from beneath the wide branches of a spruce.

They went. Beneath a lower limb, whose fan had protected it from the falling snow, was the single clear print of a snow-shoe.

"Hah!" cried Sam, in delight, and fell on his knees to examine it. At the first glance he uttered another exclamation of pleasure, for, though the shoe had been of the Ojibway pattern, in certain modifications it suggested a more northerly origin. The toes had been craftily upturned, the tails shortened, the webbing more closely woven.

"It's Ojibway," induced Sam, over his shoulder, "but the man who made it h............