At the end of a week, when the supply of provisions which the trappers had brought with them was running low, Shad suggested that he was quite able to make the journey to the river tilt. His knee was now so far improved that it caused him but slight inconvenience to walk, and he was rapidly regaining strength.

He was anxious indeed to return to the tilt. He thought of it much as one thinks of home; and the thought carried with it visions of rest and comfort. The others could ill afford a longer absence from their trails, and it was therefore with a sense of deep satisfaction to all that the camp on the shore of the Great Lake was broken.

Travelling slowly, with Shad following in the well-packed trail which the others made, they arrived at their destination on an afternoon five days later, and were welcomed by Bill Campbell and Mookoomahn.

How deeply or how lightly Mookoomahn felt when he learned of Manikawan's death, none knew. He listened in stoical silence while Bob related to him in detail the circumstances of her going and the subsequent happenings in the lodge and in the camp at the Great Lake; but throughout the recital Mookoomahn made no comments, and his countenance betrayed nothing of his sensations.

Mookoomahn was recovering rapidly. He was passing, indeed, quite beyond Bill Campbell's control; and not satisfied now with the limited portions of food which Bill, religiously adhering to the advice he had received from Dick Blake and Ed Matheson, doled out to him, he had the day before the return of the travellers stolen away to the willows along the river bank below the tilt, killed some ptarmigans on his own account, and gorged himself upon the flesh to his temporary satisfaction; but nature balanced her account with him in the hours of subsequent agony which he suffered for his indiscretion.

Fully a month elapsed after their return before Shad could eat a meal with any assurance that it would not be followed by distress. His normal appetite, however, had begun to return before they broke camp on the Great Lake, and had quickly developed into a highly abnormal appetite.

No sooner was one meal finished than his mind was centred upon the next. At night his last thought was his next morning's breakfast, and when he awoke breakfast was still on his mind. Eating during this period of recuperation was to him the all-important object in life.

It was nearly a month after his return to the river tilt that Shad first learned of Bob's loss of fortune. It was upon the occasion of the fortnightly rendezvous, when Ed Matheson remarked:

"Th' next round's about th' last we can make. Th' fur's 'most too poor t' take, now, an' when I comes back I'll strike up my traps. An' it's been a wonderful poor hunt."

"Aye, wonderful poor, an' wonderful disappointin'," sighed Bob.

"Th' worst I ever see," continued Ed. "If 'tweren't for you, Bob, clearin' Dick's an' my old debts, we'd be in a bad way gettin' next fall's debt from th' Company. An' now your losin' all your money, th' bad furrin' comes hard on you--wonderful hard. I'm fearin' th' new debt we'll all have t' start off next season with'll be a big un."

"What money did you lose, Bob? I hadn't heard of it," asked Shad, as Ed passed out of the tilt to join Dick and Bill, who were cleaning the snow from the roof of the tilt in anticipation of an early thaw.

"Th' money I has in th' bank t' St. Johns," explained Bob. "When Ed comes back from th' Bay he brings me a letter from Mother sayin' th' bank broke an' th' money's gone."

"That's bad!" Shad sympathised. "How much was there?"

"About twelve thousand dollars. But 'tain't so bad. We has th' traps, an' th' new trails laid."

"But that was the capital you were to begin trading on?"

"Aye, but we'll have t' give th' tradin' up now. I'm thinkin' th' Lard weren't wantin' us t' go tradin' or t' have th' money, an' I'm not complainin', though I were wonderful disappointed when I hears of un first."

Shad asked many questions, in the course of which he drew from Bob a description of the air castles which Bob had been building, and which had been so unceremoniously knocked down about his ears by his mother's letter; of the poverty-stricken condition of the Bay folk, which Bob in his big-hearted and youthful enthusiasm had hoped to relieve; and of many other things which he had planned to do with his fortune.

Though all this was of the past, and of little importance now, he had intended to keep it a secret. But he and Shad had grown very close together, and somehow Shad had a way of drawing from him even his most sacred thoughts--and before Bob realised it he had bared his heart to his friend.

"An' I were thinkin'," said Bob, after the sum-total of his shattered plans had been disclosed, "when we was up on th' Great Lake, what a rare fine thing 'twould ha' been for th' Injuns, if I hadn't ha' lost th' money, t' make a tradin' station an' a cache o' grub up th' other end o' th' Great Lake--seventy or eighty miles in from where Manikawan dies--so when another bad year comes th' Injuns down that way could get grub t' carry un out t' th' Ungava post. If they'd been a cache there this winter, Manikawan wouldn't ha' died, an' a lot o' th' other poor Injuns as must ha' died would ha' got out."

"That's so," agreed Shad. "What an amount of suffering it would have saved! And the poor little Indian girl wouldn't have been sacrificed."

The others returned at this point, and conversation drifted into other channels--the striking up of the traps--the probability of an early break-up--the hard times that the present season's failure was certain to cause among the people of the Bay.

"Bob, if you're going to strike up and make this next trip your last one of the season, I'm going over the trail with you," said Shad, the following day. "I want to see again the trail I helped you lay, and the tilts we built together. It seems a long while ago, and the memory of it is already a pleasant one."

So on Monday morning they started on the last round of traps for the season. The days were long now, and the sun was still high when they reached the tilt on the first lake--the tilt where Manikawan had found Bob's rifle, and the first of the series of tilts Bob and Shad had built.

They cooked and ate their supper, and then lounged back upon their bunks to chat of their first exploration of the trail, their visit to the falls, and of Manikawan's unexpected appearance when they were on the island.

Finally they lapsed into silence, Shad sitting on the edge of his bunk, his elbows on his knees, and his chin in his palms; Bob lying back, his hands folded under his head, his eyes studying the ceiling, but his thoughts far away with the loved ones at home and with Emily at school.

Suddenly Shad broke the silence and Bob's thoughts with the question:

"How would you like me for a partner, Bob?"

"A trappin' partner, Shad? 'Twould be fine, now!" exclaimed Bob, coming back to himself and his surroundings. "But I was thinkin' you'd be weary o' th' trails, Shad, after what you've been through."

"No, Bob, a trading partner;" and Shad sat up. ............