friend was being carried to his grave. The men, knowing how he had
ridden all night, found great excuses; but later on some grew anxious
and wondered what could have become of him.

Some, returning home by a short cut, passed over Dead Man's Gap beyond
Lowe's Peak.

"Wonder what could have become of Ben Duggan." mused one, as they
rode down.

There and then their wonders ceased.

A party of road-clearers had been at work along the bottom, and there
was much smoke from the burning-off, which must have made the track
dim and vague and uncertain at night. Just at the foot of the gap,
clear of the rough going, a newly-fallen tree lay across the track.
It was stripped--had been stripped late the previous afternoon, in
fact; and, well, you won't know, what a log like that is when the sap
is well up until you have stepped casually on to it to take a look
round. A confident skip, with your boot soles well greased, on to the
ice in a glaciarium for the first time would be nothing to it in its
results, I fancy. (I remember we children used to scrape the sap off,
and eat it with satisfaction, if not with relish--white box I think
the trees were.)

Ben must have broken into a canter as he reached the level, as indeed
his horse's tracks showed he did, and the horse must have blundered in
the smoke, or jumped too long or too short; anyway, his long
slithering shoe marks were in the sap on the log, and he lay there
with a broken leg and shoulder. He had struck it near the stump and