“Sixty paces south,” he next read from his directions.

He placed his compass upon the top of the round rock, which rose perhaps three feet above the ground, and repeated his former method, again sighting to a convenient tree.  Twilight was perceptibly thickening.  At this season darkness falls early in Labrador, and now, because of a heavily clouded sky, it was following twilight quickly.

“I’ll keep at un till I finds the cache.  I’ll find un before I goes back to camp whatever,” he determined. “‘Twill be easy enough gettin’ to camp even if ’tis dark before I gets there.  The brook’s handy by, and I’ll just go to un and follow un down to camp.  I hope they’ll not be worryin’ about me, but if they does ’twill not be for long.  I’ll soon be there now.”

The distance from the round rock to the tree upon which he had sighted proved to be but thirty of his short paces.  Here he was compelled to pile stones again upon which to build a resting-place for his compass before taking another sight.  Small stones such as he could lift were not easily found, and when at length he was prepared to take the sight the gloom had grown so thick that he had difficulty in locating a tree that he judged was sufficiently far away to cover the remaining distance.  Thirty more paces, however, brought him to the tree, and to his unbounded joy a lone white birch stood just beyond.

Within three paces of the birch the mysterious cache was hidden.  Here, however, the directions failed to be sufficiently explicit.  Either through oversight or purposely the bearings from the birch were omitted.

Jamie paced first to one tree and then to another; any of several trees might be the correct one.  They were all thickly branched spruce trees capable of concealing the coveted cache.  Jamie was puzzled, and every moment it was growing darker.  He looked up into the branches of one and then another, hoping to see a bag suspended from a limb, but if a bag were there it blended so completely with the foliage that even its outlines were not revealed.

“I’ll have to climb un all,” said Jamie finally, “and I’ll have to be spry about un too or ’twill be fair dark before I gets to climb the last of un.”

For his first effort he chose a tree three paces beyond the birch and in a line with the rock.  He had no difficulty in shinning up the trunk until he reached a lower limb, and then he quite easily drew himself up.

Climbing through the thick screen of branches he looked eagerly for the coveted hidden mystery, not stopping until he was well into the tree top and had made quite certain that no cache was hidden there.  Then, as he looked up toward the sky, he felt a snowflake on his face.

“Snowin’!” he exclaimed.  “I’ll have to be hurryin’ now.  If it snows hard Doctor Joe sure will be gettin’ worried about me.”

At that moment Jamie heard the breaking of a twig.  He paused and listened.  Presently he heard footsteps, and a moment later a man’s voice.  Through the gathering darkness appeared the figures of two men, and even at that distance Jamie knew they were not Bay folk.  They travelled less silently, and the tread of heavy boots is quite unlike that of moccasined feet.