[Illustration:  Katherine and Miles spearing for fish.]

“I guess we have got a load now, so we might as well stop,” said Katherine, whose arms were beginning to ache, having already had more than enough of slaughter for that day at least.

“You load while I jab at a few more of these big fellows, for they seem as if they are just yearning to be caught,” Miles cried excitedly.  “I never had such fishing as this; it is prime!”

“It isn’t fishing at all; it is nothing but killing.  Horrid work, I call it,” Katherine cried with a shudder, as, gathering up the frozen fish, she proceeded to stack them on the sledge in much the same fashion as she might have stacked billets of firewood.

The dogs had eaten a good meal, and were in fine feather for work; so, although the load was heavy, they made very good pace, and Katherine, gliding along now by the side of Miles, told him of how she had found Jamie M’Kree banging away on one of their stolen lard buckets.  Miles was furiously angry, and wanted to go straight off to Seal Cove, denouncing Oily Dave as a thief; but Katherine would not hear of it.

“By precipitating matters we may do a great deal more harm than good,” she said.  “We have had to buy our wisdom in rather an expensive school, but it ought to make us wiser in future.  So far we have only suspicions to go upon, not facts, and it is very likely that if we accused Oily Dave of stealing our stuff he would be clever enough to turn the tables on us, and have us prosecuted for libel, or something of that sort, which would not be pleasant—­nor profitable.”

“I can’t sit meekly down under things of that sort,” retorted the boy, with the sullen look dropping over his face which Katherine hated to see there.

“It isn’t easy, I know, but very often it pays best in the long run,” she answered earnestly.  “Whatever we do, or don’t do, we must take especial care that Father isn’t worried just now.  He must be our chief thought for the present, and if our business pride gets wounded, we must just take the hurt lying down for his sake.”

“Katherine, are you afraid that Father is going to die?” Miles asked, turning his head quickly to look at her; and there was the same terrified expression on his face which had been there when he asked the same question a few weeks before.

“I think his recovery will depend very largely on whether we can keep him from anxiety for the next two or three months,” she answered; and there was a stab of pain at her heart as she thought of the gnawing apprehension and worry which were secretly sapping his strength.

“Then Oily Dave mustn’t be meddled with just now, I suppose,” Miles said, with a sigh of renunciation; “but sooner or later he has got to pay for it, or I will know the reason why.”

CHAPTER VIII

The First Rain