Magnus Thorlakson was in the habit of routing out his men early. The Roadmaster had made no mistake when he handed the stolid Icelander the responsibility for nine miles of the Company's line in the middle of one of the loneliest divisions. In the discharge of his duties there was no more conscientious section foreman in the employ of the C.L.S. He timed his slumber by the sun and his waking hours were filled with the roll of hand-car wheels, the ring of spike-mauls and the tamping grate of spades.

On this particular morning the big Swede, Svenson, had polished off his second plate of fried potatoes and was grinning in anticipation of a third helping and another couple of fried eggs, when a startled exclamation from the good woman of the house, and the smash of the plate which dropped from her fingers to the floor sent her husband's chair scraping back from the table with some suddenness. Callers whose clothes stamped them as city people would have been sufficiently surprising at any time to the inhabitants of that humble dwelling in the wild country and particularly so at that early hour; but the sight of a broad-shouldered young man in his shirt-sleeves, carrying a young woman in his arms up the embankment to their door, was ample justification even for the breaking of precious porcelain.

Thorlakson muttered profanity as he stared out the window. The big Swede looked up with mild enquiry, at the same time reaching for another slice of bread, while the other two men stopped eating altogether and gazed expectantly at the door.

"Good morning, Mrs. Thorlakson," greeted Kendrick. "May we come in?"

The girl stood beside him, huddled in the coat, her face white and drawn in the cold light of early morning. The woman bobbed her head in some uncertainty, then spoke in her own language to her husband who thrust himself into the doorway and leaned a heavy, flanneled shoulder against the jamb.

"Hello, Thorlakson! There's a sprained foot here that requires rest and attention and we would like some breakfast."

Then the Icelander recognized him, turned to his wife with quick commands, waved them inside with eager hospitality, suspicion no longer mingling with curiosity in his keen, light-colored eyes.

"Farthu ut! Out!" snapped Mrs. Thorlakson, clapping her hands sharply, and a touseled head withdrew hastily from the door of the little bedroom off the kitchen. It shut with a rattle. She placed a chair for the lady close to the fire, blew out the lamp on the table and after lifting it to its place on the shelf, got a broom and began to sweep up the fragments of the broken plate.

The two Norwegians at the table stared unblinkingly. The Swede paused for an instant at his breakfast, his jaws motionless during the few seconds required for one long look. At sight of Kendrick his wide mouth had expanded to a grin of welcome which exposed the food on his tongue, but as his glance fell upon the young lady and he noted that she was smiling at him he reddened bashfully to the roots of his pale hair and, as if to make up for lost time, fell to with augmented diligence.

In spite of the painful ankle and the strangeness of her surroundings Cristy almost laughed aloud at the comical expression on the big fellow's homely face. She slipped out of Kendrick's coat and shuddered close to the fire, holding her fingers gratefully over the hot stove.

Briefly Phil explained what had happened to them, aware that the recital would not have been very convincing if he had been a complete stranger to these simple foreigners with their natural tendency to suspicion. He made no mention of the envelope that had brought him back to the scene of Podmore's capture just a few days ago. It was enough to say merely that the young lady accidentally had fallen off the step of the train and he had jumped off after her.

But Thorlakson was only anxious to show that he was grateful for the young man's recent generosity in connection with the fifty dollar reward. He nodded as he listened.

"Yaow, that vould be other side Spruce Walley. Yaow. She slow opp down thar. Wery good, Meester Kendrick. Ve glad to have you stay so long as you like. Sit down thar. Planty wittles."

But Mrs. Thorlakson willed otherwise, bustling about as she spoke.

"My voman—she say vait avile," he explained. "Planty more—nice and hot."

Phil thanked him and smiled across at his companion who was cheering up wonderfully under the benign influence of the stove.

"Yaow, that vill be tventy-five cents—each vun, tventy-five cents.
Yaow, that vill be suffeecient."

Having thus dismissed further responsibility in the matter, the foreman got up from the table and spoke to his men, who followed him outdoors to the day's work. Svenson lagged behind to gulp the remainder of his coffee and as his heavy boots clumped noisily across the rough wooden floor he ventured to look again timidly at the very pretty young lady who sat beside the stove. Her friendly nod and smile sent him stumbling clumsily out over the doorstep with reddened face and a huge grin of ecstatic delight.

"Delicious!" she laughed softly.

"Snf! Snf! Well now, you're saying something, Miss Lawson," enthused Kendrick who had been watching the frying-pan with fascination. "I'm as hungry as a bear."

Such an unusual breakfast as that was! Such wonderful home-made bread! Fried potatoes straight from the stove, piping hot and done brown; sizzling pork and eggs that were fresh laid by those hens they could hear clucking outside; buns and molasses; even doughnuts and good-natured looking wedges of pie with the knife-cuts far apart—a wonderful meal of the substantial sort favored by those to whom eating at any hour is a serious business. And they ate it with hunger for condiment, chatting and laughing in their enjoyment.

Mrs. Thorlakson beamed. It was the finest compliment they could have paid her. Afterwards with many duckings of tongue and shakes of the head she bathed the swollen ankle in cold water, put some liniment on it and bound it up. She was an adept in such matters.

During these ministrations Phil strolled down to the water-tank; but, as he half expected, he found the fungus gone from the top of the hollow stump and no sign of the envelope inside. Somebody had been there before them, Podmore probably. He would question Thorlakson about that later. Not that it mattered greatly. The sagacious Hughey was due for a severe jolt when he opened the precious envelope to which he was devoting so much attention.

On returning to the house he found that Miss Lawson very sensibly had retired for much needed sleep. He climbed the hill to the woods behind the log shanty and stretched out luxuriously on a fragrant heap of spruce boughs with the idea of indulging in pleasant retrospection.

The sun was well past its zenith when he awoke and his watch told him that it was nearly three in the afternoon. He rubbed his eyes, knotted his muscles in a satisfying stretch and leaped to his feet with a laugh. He found the girl in equally good spirits, the injured foot encased in a mocassin that belonged to one of the foreman's children. It was not a bad sprain; the pain and swelling had subsided, but it would be well to rest it for two or three days, Mrs. Thorlakson had told her. If they could put up with roughing it, she would be glad for them to stay as long as they liked.

"I've promised to show her a new crochet pattern and knit a pair of pullovers for little Skuli," smiled Cristy. "The poor thing is lonesome and I've half a mind to make a little visit for a few days. Do you know, she hasn't seen a white woman to talk to for six months?"

"You couldn't do a more charitable act, Miss Lawson, and I hope you'll allow the bell-boy to linger within call. I happen to know that Wolverine River down there has some fine trout in it and I confess I'd like awfully to rustle an Indian canoe somewhere and do a little exploring. Isn't this air simply great?"

They had wandered to the edge of the embankment and seated themselves for a sunning. She searched quickly for his expression, but he had turned and was gazing far up the track, his tanned face alight with boyish enthusiasm.

Time never passed so swiftly for Phil Kendrick as it did during the next two days. In the big roomy birch-bark canoe that Svenson had built he went fishing and exploring to his heart's content—with Miss Cristy Lawson. He initiated her into the mysteries of speckled trout and helped her to land triumphantly a three-pounder. She was interested in botany and he climbed all sorts of inaccessible places to pick strange plants for her. On these expeditions they took Mrs. Thorlakson and the children along; there was room for them all in the big canoe and with the men absent all day it was possible for them to make a picnic of it. He even enjoyed the evenings with the men while they smoked their pipes in the doorway through which it was possible to see Cristy, her sleeves tucked above a charming pair of dimpled elbows, helping Mrs. Thorlakson with the dishes.

But on the afternoon of the third day as they sat out at the edge of the clearing on a pile of balsam that he had gathered for her she began to talk of leaving. They would be wondering back there on the paper what had become of her and there was work to be done.

He could not take his eye off the diamond ring on her finger as she spoke. "They" she had said; but it was probably "he" that she thought, and he chucked a stone clean down to the water-tank, surprised that he could throw that far. The injured ankle was no longer an excuse for delaying their departure. So they planned to leave next day, boarding a chance freight and riding down the line to some station where they could catch the Toronto Express.

Several trains passed every day each way. Even as they sat there they heard the familiar rumble somewhere far off among the low hills westward. They listened to the growing noise of its approach. Presently the smoke of the engine became visible and around the curve, far up the track, the train trailed into view, a freight, the cars swinging into line and hiding behind the black front of the locomotive. The engineer was bowling her down towards them full "lickety-belt" with no intention of stopping to take on water—a through freight apparently.

With a deafening roar she swept in, the engineer jogging laxly on his cushions. Kendrick stood up and hollered at him. The salutation was acknowledged with a friendly wave of the hand. The long string of brown and yellow cars followed rattle-de-bang over the switch and rocked away eastward. The roar dropped off abruptly into diminuendo, punctuated by the rattle of a loose truck at the rear of the caboose.

From the cupola a brakeman with a dirty blue bandana knotted about his brown throat, waved to them and shouted something which they could not hear. He held aloft a white stick from which he had peeled the green bark, pointed to it, then cast it back towards them and pointed to it significantly.

"There's a paper of some kind fastened to it," said Phil as he signalled that he understood.

They gazed after the end of the caboose until the fluttering green flags faded out in the swirl of dust that pursued into the distance. Then Kendrick scrambled down to find the message. It was in a sealed envelope, bound around the stick with twine. One glance at the yellow telegram inside sent him back up the embankment towards the girl as fast as he could climb.

"Of all things, Miss Lawson!" he called out. "It's a wire from the Chief. I left a note for him, telling him where we were going, and just read this, sent down from the operator at Indian Creek. What do you make of it?"

She read it aloud, frowning in perplexity:

Philip Kendrick, Toronto, July 27. at Thorlakson Siding, via Indian Creek.

Is Cristy safe? Wire immediately you receive this. McAllister anxious. Send Cristy back but remain there yourself till McCorquodale arrives. Important work for you there. McCorquodale will explain. Jimmy Stiles missing since day you left. Did you take him with you?

WADE.

"I should have sent a wire before this, I guess," admitted Kendrick slowly. "But I thought we'd be back before Wade returned to town. I didn't think to send it to McAllister. He's your—editor, isn't he? I'll get Thorlakson to send one of his men——"

She interrupted him with a gesture of impatience.

"The question is, Mr. Kendrick, what's happened to Jimmy Stiles?"

"Yes, and what's happened to make Wade send McCorquodale up here?
What's this important work he's talking about?"

"If Jimmy Stiles has disappeared, it hasn't been of his own free will. I'm sure of that, Mr. Kendrick,—positive!" She looked at him with anxious eyes.

"He was all right the day we had lunch together," mused Phil. "The wire says he's been missing since the day I left the city; so he must have gone that night. You know him a lot better than I do, of course; but from what you told me the other night he got away with fifty thousand dollars once before in pretty slick fashion."

"That suspicion does you no credit, Mr. Kendrick," said Cristy in quick resentment. "Jimmy hasn't absconded. He's been abducted!"

"You have a ready imagination," smiled Phil.

"I know Nickleby," she retorted.

Kendrick shook his head.

"Abduction brings to mind closed cabs and chloroform. Do they pull off stunts like that nowadays—in Toronto? It sounds too melodramatic, Miss Lawson."

"What about that assault in the park by Nickleby's hirelings the other
night? You saw that yourself. I don't say Nickleby would dare to harm
Jimmy Stiles; he's no fool. But I do think that he's had a hand in
Jimmy's disappearance."

"Have you any special reason for thinking that?"

"Yes," she replied after a moment's hesitation. "We—the Recorder—Mr. McAllister has been expecting Nickleby to attempt a clean-up of some kind, preparatory to dropping out of sight completely. His present position with the Interprovincial Loan & Savings—control of the stock and all that—will come to a sudden end as soon as Mr. Bradford, the explorer, returns to civilization. Nickleby won't wait for that, will he? It looks as if he were getting ready to pull out and had found Stiles in his way. Jimmy knows too much."

"Well, speculating about things won't get us a hundred yards from Thorlakson Siding," said Kendrick philosophically. "What's needed is a train."

"There's no telling what may be going on back there while we sit here, twiddling our thumbs." She got up and walked to and fro restlessly. "Oh, if only we'd been able to go on that freight that just passed."

"We? Instructions are that I'm to wait here for McCorquodale and send you back at once. We'll flag the first train going the right way and you ought to get off by to-night. I'd better get busy and write out a reply to the wire. Mr. McAllister is anxious about your safety and it——"'

"Oh, drat McAllister!" cried Cristy impatiently.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Lawson," said Phil, "but please say that again."