On returning to the cottage, the first thing that Hugh did was to mark off the date on the calendar just as he had seen Oscar do every morning.

“We mustn’t lose count of the days,” he said to Dick.

“Oh, there won’t be so many of them as all that,” Dick answered.

Hugh said nothing. Oscar had talked to him more fully than to his comrade about the task of righting John Edmonds’ affairs.

“It may not be so simple to put them in order as he hopes it will,” he had said, “so the time may be three weeks or a month or perhaps more. I will not hide from you the chance that, if there is very bad weather soon, I may not get back to you for some time. The snow can lie very deep in these valleys.”

“Snow,” Hugh had exclaimed, “why, it is only October!”

“Remember it will be November in a week,” Oscar replied, “and that this is a climate very different from yours. Here the winter begins early and lasts long and we have to be ready for it. There are supplies enough to last until spring, I have made sure of that, and plenty of wood, so that there is no danger of your needing anything. I will come back to you as soon as I can, but at this season all plans go by the weather.”

So Hugh had written a long letter to his father for Oscar to send, explaining why mail must be uncertain and just what he was doing.

“I ought to learn a great deal from this experience,” he ended, “enough to make even you feel that I am fit for service in France. I am bound that I will make it before I am twenty-one.”

It did not look much like winter to-day, even though the woods were so bare and the hillsides so brown. The boys had arranged that they would hunt and fish as much as possible for the purpose of saving Oscar’s stores for future use, and that they would go out alone on alternate days, so that the cottage might never be left unguarded. Neither one was ever to go so far away that a certain signal of rifle shots could not call him back. It was agreed that Hugh was to go shooting the first day, so, very blithely, he had made ready, shouldered his rifle and started forth.

He stopped a moment before the door to look down at the lake, which was very still this morning and very blue. He knew now why Oscar had elected to start before the dawn, for two canoes were skimming over the quiet surface, pirate vessels, although not of the accepted type. Often before Hugh had seen them patrolling these waters that Half-Breed Jake called his own, swift craft, dark and sinister, ready to shoot any man or sink any boat that ventured through Harbin’s Channel. Harbin, he had learned, was an explorer who, fifty years ago, had coasted up and down Red Lake, mapping the islands and the bays and inlets. His boat had been wrecked in this channel: one could see its bleaching bones still wedged among the rocks, and he himself had perished at the hands of hostile Indians. Although the Indians had now nearly vanished and civilization had, since then, been creeping steadily nearer, the upper reaches of Red Lake were still as wild, unexplored and perilous as in his day. But—thus Hugh registered a vow within himself—they would soon be so no longer.

A long day’s tramp brought him fair sport, several partridges, two quail, but no sight of larger game. Hugh was a good shot and did not often fail to bring down his quarry.

“I wish I could get a deer,” he thought, but knew that for that he must go out at night.

The air was so still and the woods so silent that it seemed he must be the only person within a hundred miles. There was a sleepy swaying of the branches above his head and a quiet rustle of the leaves under his feet, otherwise there was scarcely a sound. Surely in this peaceful region there could be no such thing as quarreling and bloodshed. It was hard to believe that, only a few miles away, the dingy cabin clung to the slope of Jasper Peak and within it Half-Breed Jake and his Indian comrades were planning any sort of violence that would lead to the ruin of Oscar’s cherished scheme.

“It must be a mistake,” Hugh reflected almost aloud. “I believe I dreamed it. I don’t think this adventure is real.”

He had crossed a little brook, in the late afternoon, and was climbing the long slope beyond it when he realized that he was thirsty and that the route he was about to follow lay along the ridge, high above any water for many miles.

“I am not much of a woodsman,” he told himself. “I should have remembered to drink when I could. It would be better to go back.”

Quickly he ran down the hill, making a good deal of noise as he crashed through the underbrush. He stooped long to drink at the edge of the pool and then stood up to continue his journey. He glanced across at his own trail coming down to the water’s edge on the other shore, stared at it a moment, then ran splashing through the stream to look again. Close beside his own footprints and fresher even than they, were the marks of moccasined feet, as plain as those footprints of the big dog, Nicholas, that he had seen once, as plain and much more ominous. Some person had been following him through the wood, tracking him so closely and eagerly that he had not taken the pains to cover his own trail.

Hugh stood still and looked and listened with every nerve tense, but there was nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard. The forest was as silent as a forest in a dream. He crossed the brook again, and climbed the hill hastily. More than once he turned his head quickly and looked back over his shoulder, but there was never a stirring leaf nor a snapping twig to prove that he was being followed. He made his way homeward in the straightest line possible, thinking deeply all the way.

Time passed, the weather grew colder and the daylight shorter, but still the pirates made no move. Only the blue haze of their smoke going up from Jasper Peak showed that they were still there, watching and ever watching. Game began to be scarce in the restricted limit the boys allowed themselves for hunting, so that they fell to dipping deeper and deeper into Oscar’s stores. Everything was kept in the small shed backing up against the cottage with its door opening into the main room. This place was carefully inspected every day, according to instructions.

“For,” Oscar had said, “if the fieldmice get in and chew up your bacon or a leak comes in the roof and spoils your flour and meal, where are you? In case of bad weather your lives might depend on these supplies being safe.”

The vigilance of Nicholas sniffed out any overbold mouse that ventured within, while the boys’ watchfulness prevented any mischance from wind and rain, so that for a time all went well. They began, indeed, to feel such a sense of security that it did not seem possible anything could go amiss and it appeared that, when Oscar returned, the report given him would be quite barren of adventure. Hugh, however, thinking of those footprints by the stream, still remembered that what danger did lurk about them was bound to be unsuspected and unseen.

It had been, one day, Hugh’s turn to replenish the empty larder so that he had spent the whole afternoon fishing about a mile from the cottage. Dusk was just beginning, yet he lingered for “just one more bite,” since luck had not been good and he wished to carry home enough fish for one meal at least. He waited long for a nibble, shifting impatiently from foot to foot.

“It must be getting too cold for fishing,” he commented to himself. “Why, it feels like winter all of a sudden; it has changed a great deal since morning.”

He had just pulled in a flopping trout and had dropped it into the basket when a sudden sound startled him so that he dropped his rod. It was the sharp crack of a rifle, followed immediately by a second and a third, the prearranged signal of alarm. The pirates had struck at last!

A mile is a long way to run when the course is over a heavily wooded ridge and through a valley of poplar thickets. Hugh covered it in extraordinarily short time, although it seemed to him unnumbered hours. He was just coming, panting, up the last slope, when he met Dick, equally breathless, running toward him.

“It’s Hulda,” gasped his friend. “The Indians are trying to drive her ............