“Who stole it?” he gasped, after a minute, scarcely knowing that he spoke aloud.

Unnoticed in the firelight, Cyrus clapped a strong hand over the boy’s mouth, to stifle further questions.

“Keep still!” he whispered.

But Herb, who was, as usual, perched upon the “deacon’s seat,” leaned forward, with a laugh which was more than half a snarl.

“Who stole it?” he echoed.  “Why, the other fellow—­my chum; the man whom I carried for a mile on my back, through a snow-heaped forest, the first time I saw him, when I had lugged him out of a heavy drift. He stole it, Kid, and a’most everything I owned with it.”

[Illustration:  THE CAMP ON MILLINOKETT LAKE.]

With a savage kick of his moccasined foot, the woodsman suddenly assaulted a blazing log.  It sent a shower of sparks aloft, and caused a bright flame to shoot, rocket-like, from the heart of the fire, which showed the guide’s face.  His fine eyes reminded Cyrus of Millinokett Lake when a thunder-storm broke over it.  Their gray was dark and troubled; the black pupils seemed to shrink, as if a tempest beat on them; fierce flashes of light played through them.

Muttering a half-smothered oath, Herb flung himself off his bench, stamped across the cabin to the open camp-door, and passed into the darkness outside.

The boys, who had been stretched out in comfortable positions, drew themselves bolt upright, and sat aghast.  They stared towards the camp-door, murmuring disjointedly.  Into the mind of each flashed a remembrance of some story which Doctor Phil had told about a thieving partner who once robbed Herb Heal.

“You’ve stirred up more than you bargained for, Dol,” said Cyrus.  “I wish to goodness you hadn’t been so smart with your questions.”

But the words were scarcely spoken when the guide was again in their midst, with a smile on his lips.

“It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie, young one,” he said, looking down reassuringly on Dol, who was feeling dumfounded.  “I guess you all think I’m an awful bearish fellow.  But if you had lived the lonely life of a trapper, tramping each day through the dark woods till you were leg-weary, visiting your steel traps and deadfalls, all to get a few furs and make a few dollars; and turned up at camp one evening to find that your partner had skipped with every skin you had procured, I reckon ’twould take you a plaguy long time to get over it.”

“I’m pretty sure it would, old man,” said Cyrus.

“And I minded the loss of the furs a sight less than I minded losing that moose-head,” continued Herb, taking his perch again upon the “deacon’s seat.”  “The hound took ’em all.  Every woodsman in Maine was riled about it at the time, and turned out to ketch him; but he gave ’em the slip.  Now, boys, I’ve got to feeling pretty chummy with you.  Cyrus is an old friend; and, to speak plain, I like you Britishers.  I don’t want you to think that I bust up your fun to-night for nothing.  I’ll tell you the whole yarn if you want to hear it.”