Philip produced a couple of cigars and took a chair opposite him.

“You look bushed, Pearce,” he began.  “Business must be rushing.  I saw a light in your window after midnight, and I came within an ace of calling.  Thought you wouldn’t like to be interrupted, so I put off my business until this morning.”

“Insomnia,” said Pearce, huskily.  “I can’t sleep.  Suppose you saw me at work through the window?” There was almost an eager haste in his question.

“Saw nothing but the light,” replied Philip, carelessly.  “You know this country pretty well, don’t you, Pearce?”

“Been ‘squatting’ on prospects for eight years, waiting for this damned railroad,” said Pearce, interlacing his thick fingers.  “I guess I know it!”

“Then you can undoubtedly tell me the location of Fort o’ God?”

“Fort o’ What?”

“Fort o’ God.”

Pearce looked blank.

“It’s a new one on me,” he said, finally.  “Never heard of it.”  He rose from his chair and went over to a big map hanging against the wall.  Studiously he went over it with the point of his stubby forefinger.  “This is the latest from the government,” he continued, with his back to Philip, “but it ain’t here.  There’s a God’s Lake down south of Nelson House, but that’s the only thing with a God about it north of fifty-three.”

“It’s not so far south as that,” said Philip, rising.

Pearce’s little eyes were fixed on him shrewdly.

“Never heard of it,” he repeated.  “What sort of a place is it, a post—­”

“I have no idea,” replied Philip.  “I came for information more out of curiosity than anything else.  Perhaps I misunderstood the name.  I’m much obliged.”

He left Pearce in his chair and went directly to the factor’s quarters.  Bludsoe, chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the far north, could give him no more information than had Pearce.  He had never heard of Fort o’ God.  He could not remember the name of Couchee.  During the next two hours Philip talked with French, Indian, and half-breed trappers, and questioned the mail runner, who had come in that morning from the south.  No one could tell him of Fort o’ God.

Had Pierre lied to him?  His face flushed with anger as this thought came to him.  In the next breath he assured himself that Pierre was not a man who would lie.  He had measured him as a man who would fight, and not one who would lie.  Besides, he had voluntarily given the information that he and Jeanne were from Fort o’ God.  There had been no excuse for falsehood.

He purposely directed his movements so that he would not come into contact with Gregson, little dreaming that his artist friend was working under the same formula.  He lunched with the factor, and a little later went boldly back to the cliff where he had met Jeanne and Pierre the preceding night.  Although he had now come to expect no response to what he had written, he carefully examined the rocks about him.  Then he set out through the forest in the direction from which had come the howling of the wolf-dog.