“Surrender, or I’ll shoot! Throw up your arms!” He felt, rather than saw, that on the edge of the light stood his assistant also covering the man with his revolver. The man moved as if to obey the order to throw up his arms, and then, with a quickness of which none guessed him capable, struck Trafford’s arm a blow that caused it to drop numbly by his side, sending the pistol’s discharge into the earth. With the same movement the man crouched half to earth, and thus escaped the other’s shot. Without rising, he darted, crouching, for the shelter of trees beyond the fire, but not so quickly as to save his right arm from the second shot by the assistant. Trafford, meantime, had changed his revolver into his left hand and was firing at the fleeing shadow that the man became before disappearing. With his second shot, he heard his assistant at his side. “You know now, but we’ve lost him.” “Into the woods; into the woods,” Trafford cried, seizing a blazing pine knot. “Quick, we’ll get him yet.” Not a man stirred save Trafford, and he made only a step or two. Glancing back, he saw the drivers huddled in an excited and gesticulating group that looked startlingly like mischief. Ahead was the heavy blackness of dense trees. Then he realised that the man had escaped. Meantime the men were aroused from the stupor of their first surprise and were in a dangerous mood, the active qualities of which were quieted by the gleam of Trafford’s badge, which he felt was the best introduction to the explanation to which they were clearly entitled. They listened patiently, but simply tolerantly, and their coolness was in marked contrast to their friendliness of a brief quarter of an hour earlier. There was no denial to Trafford and his companion of the hospitality of the camp, but they were made to feel that they were unwelcome guests, and they waited anxiously and impatiently for the first touch of morning to be on their way, as well from a desire to leave their surly companions, as from impatience to be where they could make use of their newly acquired information. They were not more than a mile from camp, after a hasty breakfast eaten amid strange silence, when, from the woods lying between the track they were following and the river, a lad of about sixteen years, whom they had seen in camp the night before, overhauled them. He had evidently run most of the way, and was anxious to get back before his absence attracted attention, but he was also intent on information. The conversation with him was carried on partly in the lad’s imperfect English, and partly in the French of Canada with Trafford’s companion, and by him translated to Trafford: “Victor Vignon: my cousin. You say, murdered--dead?” Trafford nodded. “_Non._ He go big lake. Go by Aten’s stage.” “Who told you so?” demanded Trafford. “Pierre--Pierre Duchesney. When he come, he say: Victor, he go big lake: he go by Aten’s stage.”