"This is not the kind of subject one cares to talk about; but you ought to know I couldn't allow them to force Miss Chisholm upon me against her will. It was unthinkable! Besides, looking at it in the most cold-blooded manner, it would have been foolishness, for which we'd both have to pay afterwards." "I'm not so sure of that," said Carroll thoughtfully. "There were the Sabine women among other instances. Didn't they cut off their hair to make bow-strings for their abductors?" His companion made no answer, and Carroll, deciding that he had ventured as far as was prudent, talked of something else until they crept into the little tent, and soon afterwards they fell asleep. They started with the first of the daylight next morning, but the timber grew denser and more choked with underbrush as they proceeded, and for several days they wearily struggled through it and the clogging masses of tangled, withered fern. Besides this, they were forced to clamber over fallen trunks, when the ragged ends of the snapped-off branches caught their loads. Their shoulders ached, their boots were ripped, their feet were badly galled; but they held on stubbornly, plunging deeper into the mountains all the while. Soon after setting out one morning, they climbed a clearer hillside to look about them. High up ahead, the crest of the white range gleamed dazzlingly against leaden cloud in a burst of sunshine; below, dark forest, still wrapped in gloom, filled all the valley; and in between, on the middle slopes, a belt of timber touched by the light shone with a curious silvery lustre. Though it was some distance off, probably a day's journey, allowing for the difficulty of the march, Vane gazed at it earnestly. The trees were bare--there was no doubt of that, for the dwindling ranks, diminished by the distance, stood out against the snow-streaked rock like rows of rather thick needles set upright. Their straightness and the way they glistened suggested the resemblance. "Ominous, isn't it?" Carroll said at length. "If this is the valley Hartley came down, and everything points to that, we should be getting near the spruce." Vane's face grew set. "Yes," he agreed. "There has been a big fire up yonder; but whether it has swept the lower ground or not is more than I can tell. We'll find out early to-morrow." CHAPTER XXVII THE END OF THE SEARCH. The two men made a hurried breakfast in the cold dawn and not long afterwards they were struggling through thick timber, when the light suddenly grew a little clearer. Carroll remarked upon the fact and Vane's face hardened. "We're either coming to a swamp, or the track the fire has swept is close in front," the latter said.