Will sprang forward to the man’s assistance, helped him to a chair, and poured a cup of strong coffee, which the roan drank greedily.

The man’s eyes roved wildly about the room for a second then he turned anxiously to Will.

“Did they get it?” he asked.

“Did they get what?” asked the boy.

“What they came to search for.”

Will turned inquiringly toward George.

“Did they find anything during their search?” he asked.

George shook his head.

“They hadn’t concluded their search,” he replied.  “Then they failed to find the Br——­”

There was a movement at the window followed by a rifle shot.

Antoine sitting before the fire by George’s side crumpled up and dropped to the floor, a stream of blood oozing from his temple.

Before the lads could quite comprehend what had taken place, a second shot came from outside.  Then Oje’s face appeared in the doorway again, beckoning to those inside.

Tommy and Sandy stepped into the open air and were directed around to the rear of the house.

There, face up in the moonlight, lay the man whom Will had described as an East Indian.  The bandage was still around his head, but a new wound was bleeding now.  His eyes were already fixed and glassy.  The bullet had entered the center of the forehead.

“He shoot man inside!” the Indian grunted.

“And he killed him, too!” answered Tommy.

Entirely unconcerned, the Indian would have struck off into the forest, but the boys urged upon him the necessity of partaking of food.  With a stoical exclamation of indifference, Oje finally followed them into the cabin and seated himself before the open fire.

Antoine was quite dead.  The boys straightened his still figure upon the floor and placed by its side the body of the man who had been his murderer.

“We must give them decent burial in the morning,” Will decided, “and in order to do so, we must keep them away from the wild animals of the wilderness tonight.”

There was a hushed silence for a long time in the room.  The boys involuntarily turned their eyes away from the two inanimate objects which had so recently possessed the power of speech and motion.

Presently Sandy saw something glistening at the breast of the dark man.  Where his heavy coat of fur dropped back the boy thought he distinguished a gleam of gold.  Thinking that it might possibly be some trinket calculated to reveal the identity of the man, Sandy advanced to the body and threw the coat open.

There was the Little Brass God!

“We didn’t have to find it,” Tommy said slowly after a short pause.  “The fellow brought it to us!”

Will took it into his hand and made a careful examination of it.

“Do you think this is the one we are after?” he asked.

“Holy Moses!” exclaimed Sandy.  “You don’t think there are two Little Brass Gods, do you?  One seems to have kept us pretty busy!”