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 *some, hungry camp it'll be. But that's soldierin'."

"Well, the orders are to ketch him—or to join him farther down, wherever that may be," said Terry. "But we can't travel by night, in here. So we'll have to camp, and foller out our orders to-morrow."

It was a lonesome camp, and a cold camp, and a hungry camp, here in the dark, frozen depths of the long and silent defile cut by the mysterious river. They munched a few mouthfuls apiece of dried meat; Stub slept the most comfortably, under a blanket upon the sledge; the two men laid underneath a single deer-hide, upon the snow.

They all started on at daybreak. Stub was enough stronger so that he sprang off to lighten the load—even pushed—at the worst places. Indeed, his head was in first-class shape; the scar pained very little. And he had rather settled down to being Jack Pursley again. Only, he wished that he knew just where his father was. Dead? Or alive?

It was slow going, to-day. The river seemed to be getting narrower. Where the current had overflowed and had frozen again, the surface was glary smooth; the craggy shore-line constantly jutted with sudden points and shoulders that forced the sledges out to the middle. The slopes were bare, save for a sprinkling of low bushes and solitary pines, cling