white and spotted skins hanging over a beam. A close observer might have
noticed a slight nod of his head, as if he said, "I thought so." But the
boys were following the scent of browning griddle-cakes and saw neither
the skins nor the Major's nod.

But Barney, missing a familiar pungent odor that should go with such a
breakfast in a wilderness, hurried back to the plane to return with a
coffee pot and a sack of coffee.

Within the cabin they found everything scrupulously clean. Strange
cooking utensils of copper and stone caught their eye, while the
translucent window-panes puzzled them. But all this was forgotten when
they sat down to a polished table of white wood, and attacked a towering
stack of cakes which vied with cups of coffee in sending a column of
steam toward the rafters.

With memories stirred by draughts of long untasted coffee, it was not
difficult for Timmie to tell his Story.

"When I left the settlement," he began, as he turned his mooseskin,
hammock-like chair toward the open fireplace, and invited his guests to
do likewise, "I struck straight into the wilderness. I had a little food,
a small rifle and fishing-tackle. To me a summer in the woods with such
equipment was no problem at all. I meant to go northwest for, perhaps,
two hundred miles, camp there for the summer, then work my way back by
going southwest. I would then be far from my crime and would be safe.
That is what I meant to do. But once in the silent woods, I began to
think of the wrong I had done. I would have given worlds to be back. But
it was too late. I had to keep going. Fording rivers, creeping through
underbrush, climbing ridges, crossing swampy beaver-meadows, fighting the