Alice lifted her eyes to her husband and began, in her rich contralto voice, a song that recalled the days when he had first known and loved her. She sang it all through, never once taking her eyes from the man who sat apart from the others, his head buried deep in his hands. As the last note died away a crackling in the brush behind the lean-to was heard. The two woodsmen sprang instantly to their feet; Annette screamed. The drums of Alice's ears were thumping with the beating of her heart. Holcomb reached for his rifle laying between his own and the Clown's pack, and hurriedly cocked it. The old dog had already plunged ahead into the underbrush with a low growl. "Hold on, Billy," came a thin voice out of the blackness beyond and to the left of the lean-to. "Don't shoot!" A short, gaunt figure now leaped noiselessly--rather than strode--out into the firelight. He moved with the furtive agility of an animal, making straight for the fire, over which he stood for some moments warming himself. The silent apparition stood in a pair of soaked moccasins. On his legs were worn trousers of deerskin, patched here and there with the skins of muskrats and squirrels; one thin brown knee showed bare through a rent. Over a tattered woollen shirt hung an old cloth coat twice too big for him--moss-green from exposure, the sleeves of which hung in shreds over his bony fingers. Framed by a shock of sandy hair falling to his shoulders, and by an unkempt, tow-coloured beard, his eyes shone out in the firelight over his cheek-bones, with the cavernous brilliancy of an owl's. To have guessed his age would have been impossible. The truth was he was thirty-one. No one spoke. They watched. The trapper rose to his feet and laid his hand on the stranger's shoulder. The figure, with a wistful look in his eyes, twisted his emaciated body and held out his hand. The trapper grasped the thin, sinewy fingers in both his own. "Friend," he said, turning to Thayor, "I'd like to make ye acquainted with my son--Bob Dinsmore." CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE The sudden apparition of this pitiful outcast, worn by exposure and untold suffering--coming as he did into the midst of the little band of refugees struggling with their own misfortunes, and the confidence of the trapper in those he was leading to safety, had brought a sudden joy to the old man's heart. He vowed inwardly now that his son should wander no longer--he would save him with the rest. It had not been the first time the trapper had acknowledged the hide-out as his son. A week after Bailey was shot he had told Holcomb and Freme--with them he knew his son's secret was safe; they, too, had helped the outcast more than once.