It was dark in the clearing, and a couple of steps brought him face to face with Appleton, who was coming to tell his niece that the ladies' quarters were ready. The foreman paused and looked squarely into the face of his employer. He slowly raised an arm and pointed to the open door of the office. "Miss Manton," he said, "has fainted." And without waiting for a reply, passed on into the night. CHAPTER XXXVIII CHARLIE FINDS A FRIEND The following morning the camp looked out upon a white world. The threatened snow which began during the night was still falling, and from the windows the dark walls of the clearing could be seen but dimly through the riot of dancing flakes. It was a constrained and rather glum party that sat down to breakfast shortly after daylight in the room adjoining the office, where two deal tables had been drawn together and spread with a new, white oilcloth. Ethel Manton had entirely recovered from her syncope of the previous evening, and had offered no elucidation other than that of fatigue. Nevertheless, not a person in the room but felt that there had been another and more immediate cause for the girl's collapse. Charlie had begged to be allowed to "eat with the men," and the foreman had courteously declined Appleton's invitation to join the party during their stay in camp. The dismal and sporadic attempts at conversation had slumped into an awkward silence, in the midst of which the door burst open and young Charlie catapulted into the room. "Oh, Eth! Guess who he is!" he cried. "Guess who's the boss--the man the Indians call The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die'! It's _Bill Carmody_! And I knew him the minute I saw him, if he _has_ got whiskers all over his face and a buckskin shirt. "And he knew _me_! And he shook hands with me right before all the men--and you ought to seen 'em look! And he's going to teach me how to walk on snowshoes! Oh, ain't you _glad_! 'Cause now you and Bill can----" "_Charlie!_" The girl's face flamed, and the word seemed wrung from her very heart. The boy paused for a moment in the midst of his breathless harangue and eyed his sister with disgust. "You know you _do_ love him," he continued, his eyes flashing defiantly, "even if you did have a scrap--and he loves you, too! And that dang St. Ledger's just nothing but a--a--a _squirt_--that's what he is--and if I was Bill Carmody I'd punch his head for him if he even _spoke_ to you again--if you was _my_ girl! "And I'm going to tell him we _know_ he never swiped those bonds, and you stuck up for him when old man Carmody told you he did." The last words of the boy's remarks were addressed to an empty chair, for the girl, white and trembling, had fled into the other room and banged the door after her.