CHAPTER PAGE

    I The First Problem 1

   II The Man and His Mission 14

  III The Deserted Cabin 24

   IV In Which Mr. Thompson Begins to Wonder Painfully 37

    V Further Acquaintance 46

   VI Certain Perplexities 60

  VII A Slip of the Axe 80

 VIII —­And the Fruits Thereof 86

   IX Universal Attributes 93

    X The Way of a Maid with a Man 102

   XI A Man’s Job for a Minister 111

  XII A Fortune and a Flitting 123

 XIII Partners 139

  XIV The Restless Foot 150

   XV The World Is Small 158

  XVI A Meeting by the Way 168

 XVII The Reproof Courteous (?) 183

XVIII Mr. Henderson’s Proposition 191

  XIX A Widening Horizon 203

   XX The Shadow 210

  XXI The Renewed Triangle 218

 XXII Sundry Reflections 227

XXIII The Fuse—­ 235

 XXIV —­And the Match That Lit the Fuse—­ 244

  XXV —­And the Bomb the Fuse Fired 252

 XXVI The Last Bridge 267

XXVII Thompson’s Return 273

XXVIII Fair Winds 282

 XXIX Two Men and a Woman 291

  XXX A Mark to Shoot at 298

CHAPTER I

THE FIRST PROBLEM

Lone Moose snaked its way through levels of woodland and open stretches of meadow, looping sinuously as a sluggish python—­a python that rested its mouth upon the shore of Lake Athabasca while its tail was lost in a great area of spruce forest and poplar groves, of reedy sloughs and hushed lakes far northward.