Larry snatched it, crashing down the shore in the vain hope of reaching the drifting body.  The canoe was up in the woods where they had dropped it at the sound of Jack’s gunshots.  He could not begin to get near enough with that twenty-foot rope.  There was but one hope left—­a huge overhanging pine tree a little above the falls—­perhaps he could help the struggling man from its branches.  But before he could even reach the tree, let alone crawl out above the river, the dark, drifting mass, with its struggling arms and white face, had already been sucked far past its furthest branches.  Beside Jack, whose straining eyes watched for the inevitable end, stood Fox-Foot, his arms folded tightly across his chest, his gaze riveted on the drifting speck.  Then both boys shuddered, for the swirling speck seemed suddenly to stand erect, then plunged feet foremost over the brink.

Larry returned very slowly, his legs lagging heavily at every step.  All day they searched in the river far below the falls, but not a trace could be found of the man in the mackinaw.

“Is there a particle of chance that the poor fellow could escape death?” asked Larry of Fox-Foot that night, when, wearied and thoroughly played out, they pitched their camp for the last night in the forest.

“Yes; one chance in fifty.  My father he knows two men escape long time ago.”

“It strikes me,” said Larry, grimly, “that if there is a ghost of a chance he’ll get it.”

“I hope so,” declared Jack, fervently.  “My neck will be purple from his claws for some time yet, but, oh!  I hope he escaped.”

“Yes,” echoed Larry, solemnly, “it would be miserable to think that I had secured this gold at the price of a man’s life, no matter how degraded that man may be.  No, I would not want the gold at that price.”

So with this shadow surrounding them, their last day in the wilds was very quiet, and, when at last they paddled into the little settlement, it was with a sigh of both regret and relief that Matt Larson lifted his gold sacks from the canoe.

The Hudson’s Bay trader greeted them cordially.  “Got any furs for me, Larry?” was the first thing he asked.

Then Matt Larson threw back his head and laughed heartily for the first time in days.  He had forgotten all about that old tale that he was going north for “furs.”  So now he related all his story, showing his gold to the bluff, old, honest trader.

“You’re lucky to get it to the front,” said that person.  “There’s been one of our notorious Northern ‘bad men’ up in the bush for weeks.  If you’d come across him now, you would never have got those nuggets here safely.  But you’re all right from now on.  He drifted in here to-day and took the noon train west.”

All three adventurers sprang to their feet.

“What!” yelled Larry.  “Came here to-day!  What did he look like?”

“Looked more like mincemeat than any human being I ever saw,” replied the trader.  “Tall, dark, evil-looking man.  Wore a mackinaw, was wringing wet to the skin, had one arm in a sling made of a wild grapevine, face slit up in ribbons as if he’d been fighting bears, limped as if he had stringhalt.  Said he was going to the hospital at Port Arthur.”