heart sick within him.  Then, in a flash, came the memory of Joanne’s words—­words in which, white-faced and trembling, she had confessed that her anxiety was not that she would find him dead, but that she would find him alive.  A joyous thrill shot through him as he remembered that.  Whoever this man was, whatever he might have been to her once, or was to her now, Joanne did not want to find him alive!  He laughed softly to himself as he quickened his pace.  The tense grip of his fingers loosened.  The grim, almost ghastly part of it did not occur to him—­the fact that deep in his soul he was wishing a man dead and in his grave.

He did not return at once to the scenes about Quade’s place, but went to the station, three quarters of a mile farther up the track.  Here, in a casual way, he learned from the little pink-faced Cockney Englishman who watched the office at night that Stevens had been correct in his information.  Quade had gone to Tete Jaune.  Although it was eleven o’clock, Aldous proceeded in the direction of the engineers’ camp, still another quarter of a mile deeper in the bush.  He was restless.  He did not feel that he could sleep that night.  The engineers’ camp he expected to find in darkness, and he was surprised when he saw a light burning brightly in Keller’s cabin.

Keller was the assistant divisional engineer, and they had become good friends.  It was Keller who had set the first surveyor’s line at Tete Jaune, and it was he who had reported it as the strategic point from which to push forward the fight against mountain and wilderness, both by river and rail.  He was, in a way, accountable for the existence of Tete Jaune just where it did exist, and he knew more about it than any other man in the employ of the Grand Trunk Pacific.  For this reason Aldous was glad that Keller had not gone to bed.  He knocked at the door and entered without waiting for an invitation.

The engineer stood in the middle of the floor, his coat off, his fat, stubby hands thrust into the pockets of his baggy trousers, his red face and bald cranium shining in the lamplight.  A strange fury blazed in his eyes as he greeted his visitor.  He began pacing back and forth across the room, puffing volumes of smoke from a huge bowled German pipe as he motioned Aldous to a chair.

“What’s the matter, Peter?”

“Enough—­an’ be damned!” growled Peter.  “If it wasn’t enough do you think I’d be out of bed at this hour of the night?”

“I’m sure it’s enough,” agreed Aldous.  “If it wasn’t you’d be in your little trundle over there, sleeping like a baby.  I don’t know of any one who can sleep quite as sweetly as you, Peter.  But what the devil is the trouble?”

“Something that you can’t make me feel funny over.  You haven’t heard—­about the bear?”

“Not a word, Peter.”

Keller took his hands from his pockets and the big, bowled pipe from his mouth.