“Get up!” he cried, as the Indian youth sat erect.  “It’s time to go!”

He tried to suppress his nervousness when Mukoki and Wabi joined him beside the fire.  He determined not to let them know of his visions, for there was gloom enough among them as it was.  But he would hurry.  He was the first to get through with breakfast, the first to set to work among the dogs, and when Mukoki started out at the head of the team through the forest he was close beside him, urging him to greater speed by his own endeavors.

“How far are we from the camp, Mukoki?” he asked.

“Four hour—­twent’ mile,” replied the old pathfinder.

“Twenty miles.  We ought to make it by dawn.”

Mukoki made no answer, but quickened his pace as the cedar and balsam forest gave place to an open plain which stretched for a mile or two ahead of them.  For an hour longer the moon continued to light up the wilderness; then, with its descent lower and lower into the west, the gloom began to thicken, until only the stars were left to guide the pursuers.  Even these were beginning to fade when Mukoki halted the panting team on the summit of a mountainous ridge, and pointed into the north.

“The plains!”

For several minutes the three stood silent, gazing out into the gloom of the vast solitudes that swept unbroken to Hudson Bay.  Again Rod’s blood was thrilled with the romance of what lay at his feet and far beyond, thrilled with the romance and mystery of that land of the wild which reached for hundreds of miles into the North, and into which the foot of the white man had as yet scarce left its imprint.

Before him, enveloped now in the deep gloom of the northern night, slept a vast unexplored world, a land whose story the passing of ages had left unrevealed.  What tragedies of nature had its silent fastnesses beheld?  What treasure did they hold?  Half a century or more ago the men whose skeletons they had found in the old cabin had braved the perils of those trackless solitudes, and somewhere hundreds of miles out in that black gloom they had found gold, the gold that had fallen as an inheritance to them in the discovery of the old birch-bark map.  And somewhere, somewhere out there was Minnetaki!

Across the plain at their feet the three adventurers had raced for their lives from the bloodthirsty Woongas only a week or so before; now they crossed it a second time and at even greater speed, for then they had possessed no dogs.  At the end of another hour Mukoki no longer traveled faster than a walk.  His eyes were constantly on the alert.  Occasionally he would stop the dogs and strike off to the right or the left of the trail alone.  He spoke no word to his companions, and neither Rod nor Wabigoon offered a suggestion.  They knew, without questioning, that they were approaching their old camp, and just as the experienced hunter makes no sign or sound while his dog is nosing out a half-lost trail so they held