Soon another soft, crushing sound reached him. Some animal creeping along in the passage between the ledges, he thought. He stepped quickly to the end of the shelf. On that instant a crouching form rose upward and confronted him. He had one moment only, but enough to see a tall man a step below him, the next a flash of spitting fire, a stinging pain in one shoulder, and this human panther leaped upon McGuire! But life was sweet, even to McGuire, and as he grasped and struck at this enemy in a blind instinct of self-preservation as both closed in a death-grapple, one instant of awful agony came to him as a knife entered his heart--a yell of mingled hate and deadly fear, as two bodies writhed on the narrow shelf, a plunging sound, as both struck the water below--and then silence. Death and vengeance were clasped in one eternal embrace. CHAPTER XX "Thar's two things it don't pay to worry 'bout,--those ye can help 'n' and those ye can't."--Old Cy Walker. When Old Cy and Ray once more made their way up the Beaver Brook valley, it was with the feeling that this lone and sinister trapper might be met at any moment. They dared not leave their canoe where it might be easily found, but adopting Indian tactics, Old Cy cunningly hid it in a rank growth of swamp grass, and oft doubling on their own tracks and wading the shallow stream, left only a confusing trail. When the deadfalls had been visited and they began gum-gathering again, they watched constantly for an enemy. A dense forest of tall spruces is at best a weird and ill-omened spot. Its vastness appalls, its shadows seem spectral, and every natural object becomes grotesque and distorted. An overturned stump with bleaching roots appears like a hideous devilfish with arms ready to entwine and crush. A twisted tree trunk, prone, rotting, and coated with moss, looks like a huge green serpent, and even a knot in the side of a big spruce will resemble a grinning gnome. Even the sunlight flitting through the dense canopy plays fantastic tricks, and every breath of wind becomes the moan of troubled spirits. Something of this weird impress now assailed Old Cy and more especially Ray, and after two days of unpleasant work in this part of the wilderness, they gave it up. "I don't like feelin' I'm bein' watched," Old Cy observed when they once more started for home, "an' to-morrer I guess we'd best go 'nother way. Thar's a good spruce growth over beyond the hog-back, 'n' I'd feel safer leavin' the canoe whar Amzi kin keep an eye on't. We kin come up now once a week 'n' tend the deadfalls 'n' not leave the canoe more'n an hour." Little did Old Cy realize how groundless his fears now were, or that fathoms deep, in a cold, mountain-hid lake, the thieving McGuire and the implacable half-breed were now locked in the clasp of death. A change of location, however, banished somewhat of this spectral presence, and although Old Cy was ever alert and watchful, he showed no sign of it.