“‘So,’ I said at last.  ’So they are there at that camp.  You knew it and brought me by.’

“‘You couldn’t have helped them any,’ she said, ’and you can go back, if you wish, with the guard.’  Then she told me how she had visited the camp with her brother Robert and had seen them bound with stout strips of elk-hide.  They had explained the accident and how one of them, to give me time at the start, had put himself in my place.”

Tisdale halted a moment; a wave of emotion crossed his face.  His look rested on Mrs. Weatherbee, and his eyes drew and held hers.  She leaned forward a little; her lips parted over a hushed breath.  It was as though she braved while she feared his next words.  “That possibility hadn’t occurred to me,” he went on, “yet I should have foreseen it, knowing the man as I did.  We were built on the same lines, practically the same size, and we had outfitted together for the trip.  He wore high, brown shoes spiked for mountain climbing, exactly like mine; he even matched the marks of that heel.  But Sandy wouldn’t stand for it.  He declared there was a third man who had gone up Rocky Brook and had not come back.  One of the squaws who had seen me agreed with him, but they were bound and taken to the encampment.  The next morning an Indian found my coat and shoes lodged on a gravel bar and picked up my trail.  The camp moved then by canoe around to the mouth of the Duckabush. taking the prisoners with them, and waited for my trailers to come down.  They had discovered me on the log crossing when it fell, and believed I was drowned.”

There was another pause.  Mrs. Weatherbee sighed and leaned back in her chair; then Mrs. Feversham said:  “And they refused to let your substitute go?”

Tisdale nodded.  “He was brought with Sandy along to the Lilliwaup.  The Indians were traveling home, and no doubt the reservation influence had restrained them; still, they were staying a second night on the Lilliwaup, and when Robert spoke to them they were sullen and ugly.  That was why he had hurried away to bring the superintendent down.  He had started in his Peterboro but expected to find a man on the way who would take him on in his motor-boat.  Once during the night John had drifted close to the camp to listen, but things were quiet, and they had bridged the morning with a little fishing and sketching up-stream.

“‘Suppose,’ I said at last, ’suppose you had been afraid of me.  I should be doubling back to the Duckabush now.  As it is, I wouldn’t give much for their opinion of me.’

“‘I wish you could have heard that man Sandy,’ she said, and—­did I tell you she had a very nice smile?  ‘He called you true gold.’  And while she went on to repeat the rest he had told her, it struck me pleasantly I was listening to my own obituary.  But the steamer was drawing close.  She whistled the landing, and the girl dipped her oars again, pulling her long, even strokes.  I threw off the rug and sat erect,