"We've got the goods on him this time," Downey told the factor. "And a damned peculiar case. I picked him up a few miles south of the lake. I heard a shot, and an hour later I located him and crept up through the brush. He had just finished burying Wentworth's body all but the heart--that was dryin' on a little stick beside the fire. There was an empty shell in his rifle. But--what I can't make out is this." He paused and withdrew from his pocket a small tin box, and opening it, disclosed a handful of ashes and the half of a United States gold certificate for ten thousand dollars. "He was holdin' it over a little fire," explained the officer. "I located him by the smoke smell. I covered him, and he dropped this last fragment to throw up his hands. It's money. I didn't know they made 'em so big. But why in hell should he burn it?" Murchison examined the fragment with its burned edge. "Alex Thumb was canny," he muttered. "The bills was too big. He didn't dare to spend 'em." THE END End of Project Gutenberg's The Challenge of the North, by James Hendryx