"Well, that brings me to to-day," Leslie began after a pause. "I was down beside the dump looking for you about eleven o'clock this morning when I saw him coming over the Ledge--Weston, I mean. Same goggles, same cap drawn down over his ears, same outfit except the game pouch. I noticed as soon as he came near that the pouch was gone. Tell you what, Ross, I made tracks down the trail, got my snow-shoes on and went to meet him. I would have hurried to meet a Hottentot! Uncle Jake stayed behind jabbering in German, and fairly dancing up and down in his excitement because you had not come with Weston." Ross, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his palms, staring at Leslie, saw in a flash the latter as he had appeared at Sagehen Roost, overbearing and dictatorial. Then he saw him running across the lonely valley of Meadow Creek eager to meet any one on a fraternal footing. "Weston must have left his shack and made a long trip behind it up the mountain and around over the summit to have come in on the Ledge; don't you think so?" asked Ross. "He probably didn't want to run any risk of being seen." Leslie assented and went on with his story. He had gone to meet Weston with a demand as to Ross's whereabouts and return. "Don't ye worry none about Doc," Weston declared heartily. "He's fixin' things fine over our way. Doc's all right!" "So he is," Leslie agreed, "and for that reason we want him right here, Uncle Jake and I!" "Wall," Weston drawled good-naturedly, "he says the same about you even t' wantin' ye where he is now for a day." "What do you mean?" Leslie asked. The two had been walking back toward the shack and the frantic Weimer, and Weston did not explain until he had assured Uncle Jake of Ross's safety and health, and was seated beside the stove. "Not once while he was there," Leslie told Ross, "not even when he was eating dinner, did he take off his cap--merely pushed it back a little. Uncle Jake urged him to shed it, but he just grinned and said he had a bald spot on the top of his head, and had got into the habit of wearing his cap all the time to keep that spot warm. Said he guessed he wouldn't 'bust into that habit now.' I thought he was an odd Dick to get into such a habit, and with a fur cap, too, but it was all so plausible, Ross, everything he said was said with such an air of truth, that I didn't once suspect." "No more did I," confessed Ross.