"There are five old operations around this pond, and a set of empty camps on each one," said Straight. "I've been to each one of them in times past, and I know where the main roads come out to the landings. But it's slow business, takin' 'em one after the other. Perhaps we ought to go back and beat the truth of this thing into Barnum Withee's thick head, and start the hue and cry--but--but--I'd hoped to do it some better way." "Straight," panted the young man, "it's getting to be perfectly damnable, this suspense! Let's do something, if it's only to run up the middle of that pond and shout!" "Well," snorted the old guide, irrelevantly, "I've been lookin' for old Red Fins to come along for two days now, and I ain't disappointed. If there's trouble anywhere in this section, old Eli has got a smeller that leads him to it." Wade whirled from his despairing survey of the pond and saw Prophet Eli. He was coming down the tote road on his "ding-swingle," urging on his little white stallion with loose, clapping reins. Huge mittens of vivid red encased his hands, and his conical, knitted cap was red, and was pulled down over his ears like a candle-snuffer. Wade felt a queer little thrill of superstition as he looked at him, and then sneered at himself as one who was allowing good wit to be infected by the idle follies of the woods. And yet there was something eerie in the way this bizarre old wanderer turned up now, as he had appeared twice before at times that meant so much, at moments so crucial, in Wade's woods life. Prophet Eli swung up to them, halted, and peered at them curiously out of his little eyes. "Green, blue, and yellow," he blurted, patting his much-variegated wool jacket. "And red! Red mittens good for the arterial blood. Why don't you wear them?" "Say, look here, prophet--" began Christopher, blandly respectful. "Green is nature's color. Calms the nerves. Blue, electricity for the system--got a stripe of it all up and down my backbone. Good for you. Ought to wear it. Yellow, kidneys and cathartic. You'd rather be sick, eh? Be sick. Clek-clek!" He clucked his tongue and clapped his reins. But Christopher grabbed at the stallion's headstall and checked him. "I believe the idea is all c'rect, prophet, and I'll use it, and I'll try to make it right with you. But just now I'm wantin' a little information, and I'll make it right with you for that, too. You're sky-hootin' round these woods all the time. Now, where's Lane been makin' his headquarters?--you ought to know!" "What do you want him for? State-prison or insane asylum?" snapped the prophet. "I don't want him," said the woodsman, solemnly. "He's spoken for, Eli. He's down there, dead, in Barn Withee's camps."