The little gray eyes blinked quickly. What that emotion was, one could not guess. For the voice of the prophet did not waver in its brisk staccato. "Dead, eh? Hate-bug crawled into him and did it. I told him to stay in the woods and the hate-bugs couldn't get him. Told him twenty years ago. But he wasn't careful. Let the hate-bug get him at last. Dead, eh? I'll go and get him." "Get him?" echoed Christopher. "Promised to bury him," explained the prophet, promptly. "Wanted to be buried off alone, just as he lived. Rocks for a pillow. Expects to rest easy. I helped him dig his grave and lay out the rocks a long time ago. And I'll tell no one the place--no, sir." "Well, that lets Withee out of trouble and expense," said the woodsman, "and you'll get a good reception down that way. Now, prophet, where's he been hiding? You know, probably. It's important, I tell you." The old man had struck his stallion, and the animal was trying to get away. But Christopher held on grimly. "You call yourself a good woodsman?" squealed the indignant Eli. "I reckon I'll average well." "If any one wants anything of 'Ladder' Lane now," cried the prophet, "it must be for something that he's left behind him! Left behind him!" he repeated. He stood up on the "ding-swingle," and ran his keen gaze about the ridges that circled the lake. "Was it something that could build a fire?" he demanded, sharply. Christopher, in no mood for confidences, stared at the peppery old man. "You call yourself a good woodsman, and don't know what it means to see that!" He pointed his whip at a thin trail of white smoke that mounted, as tenuous almost as a thread, above the distant shore of Dickery Pond. "No lumbermen operating there for three years, and you see that, and are lookin' for something, and don't go and find out! And you call yourself a woodsman!" Without further word or look he lashed the stallion; the animal broke away with a squeal, and Prophet Eli's "ding-swingle" disappeared down the tote road in a swirl of snow. "No, I ain't a woodsman!" snorted Christopher. He started away across the pond at a pace that left Wade breath only for effort and not for questions. "I ain't a woodsman. Standin' here and not seein' that smoke! Not seein' it, and guessin' what it must mean! I ain't a woodsman!" Over and over he muttered his bitter complaints at himself in disjointed sentences. "I'm gettin' old. I must be blind. A lunatic can tell me my business." His anger rowelled him on, and when he reached the opposite shore of the lake he was obliged to wait for the younger man to come floundering and panting up to him. "I don't feel just like talkin' now, Mr. Wade," he said, gruffly. "I don't feel as though I knew enough to talk to any one over ten years old." He strode on, tugging the sled.