complained of feeling sick. They were kind enough to him; he stayed with them, but in a few days they found out what the matter was. He had smallpox.

"Now, you know how the Indians and half-breeds dread smallpox. They fear it like death itself, but these fellows seem to have behaved pretty well at first. They did what they could for the sick man, but pretty soon one of the trappers came down with the disease. It took a violent form, and he was dead in a few days.

"That was too much for the nerve of the Indian, and he slipped away and started for the settlements south. But he had waited too long. He had the germs in him. He sickened in the woods, but had strength enough to keep going till he came to the first clearings. Somebody rushed him in to Hickson, and so he was passed on to my hands."

"And what became of the white man and the other trapper?" demanded Fred.

"Ah, that's what nobody knows. The Indian said that the remaining half-breed was falling sick when he left. The white man may be dead by this time, or perhaps still living but deserted, or he may be well on the road to recovery. But I left out the sensational feature of the whole thing. My Indian said that the white man had a buckskin sack on him full of little stones that shone like fire. He seemed to set great store by them, and threatened to blow the head off anybody who touched the bag."

"Shining stones? Perhaps they were diamonds!" ejaculated Fred.

"It looks almost as if he might have found the diamond fields, for a fact," said Peter, with sparkling eyes.

Canada was full of rumors of diamond discoveries just then. Every Canadian must remember the intense excitement created by the report that diamonds had been found in the mining regions of northern Ontario. Several stones had actually been brought down to Toronto and Montreal, where tests showed them to be real diamonds, though they were mostly small, flawed, and valueless. One, however, was said to have brought nine hundred dollars, and the news set many parties outfitting to prospect for the blue-clay beds. But they met with no success. In every case the stones had either been picked up in river drift or obtained from Indians who could give no definite account of where they had been found.

Could it be that this strange white man had actually stumbled on the diamond fields—only to fall sick and perhaps to die with the secret of his discoveries untold? Fred gazed from Peter to Maurice, almost speechless.

"Naturally, my first idea was to get up a rescue party to bring out the sick prospector," Maurice went on. "But the woods are in the worst kind of shape for traveling. The streams are all frozen hard, but there has been remarkably little snow yet—not near enough for snowshoes or sledges. It would be impossible to tramp that distance and pack the supplies. Besides, when I came to think it over it struck me that the thing was too valuable to share with a lot of guides and backwoodsmen. If we find that fellow alive, and he has really discovered anything, it would be strange if he wouldn't give us a chance to stake out a few claims that might be worth thousands—maybe millions. And it struck me that there was a quicker way to get to him than by snowshoes or dogs. The streams are frozen, the ice is clear, and the skating was fine at Muirhead."

"An expedition on skates?" cried Fred.

"Why not? There's a clear canoe way, barring a few portages, and that means a clear ice road till it snows. But it might do that at any moment."

"A hundred and fifty miles in two days?" said Fred. "Sure, we can do it. I'll set the pace, if you fellows can keep up."

"Anyhow, I came straight down to the city and saw Maurice about it. He said you'd be the best third man we could get. But I had hoped we could get Horace, so as to have his expert opinion on what that man may have found."

"The last time I heard from Horace he was at Red Lake," said Fred, "but I wouldn't have any idea where to find him now. He always comes back to Toronto for the winter, and he can't be much later than this."

"Well, we can't wait for him," said Maurice regretfully. "I'm sorry, but maybe next spring will do as well, when we go to prospect our diamond claims."

"Yes, but we've got to get them first," said Peter, "and there's a man's life to be saved—and it might snow to-night and block the whole expedition."

"Then we'd get dogs and snowshoes," Maurice remarked, "but it would be far slower traveling than on skates."

"We must rush things. Could we get away to-morrow?" Fred cried.

"We must—by the evening train. Maurice and I have been making out a list of the things we need to buy. Have you a gun? Well, we have two rifles anyway, and that'll be more than enough, for we want to go as light as possible. You'll need a sleeping-bag, of course, and your roughest, warmest woolen clothes, and a couple of heavy sweaters. We'll carry snowshoes and moccasins with us, in case of a snowfall. I'll bring a medicine case and disinfectants."

"Will we have to pack all that outfit on our shoulders?" Fred asked.

"No, of course not. I have a six-foot toboggan, which I'll have fitted with detachable steel runners to-morrow, good for either ice or snow. We'll haul it by a rope. But here's the main thing—the grub list."

Fred glanced over the scribbled rows of the carefully considered items,—bacon, condensed milk, powdered eggs, beans, dehydrated vegetables, meal, tea, bread,—and he was astonished.

"Surely we won't need all this for a week or ten days?"

"That's a man-killing country in the winter," responded the Scotchman grimly. "I know it. You have to go well prepared, and you never can depend on getting game after snow falls. Besides, we'll have no time for hunting. Yes, we'll need every ounce of that, and it'll all have to be bought to-morrow. And now I suppose we'd better improve the last chance of sleeping in a bed that we'll have for some time."

He went to the window and again observed the sky, which remained clear and starry, snapping with frost.

"No sign of snow, certainly. We can count on you, then, Osborne? Of course it's understood that we share expenses equally—they won't be heavy—and share anything that we may get out of it."

"Count on me? I should rather think so!" cried Fred fervently. "Why, I'd never have forgiven you if you hadn't let me in on this. But we'll have to do a lot of quick shopping to-morrow, won't we? Where do we meet?"

"At my rooms, as soon after breakfast as possible," replied Mac. "And breakfast early, and make all the preparations you can before that."

At this they went away, leaving Fred alone, but far too full of excitement to sleep. He sorted out his warmest clothing, carefully examined and oiled his hockey skates and boots, wrote a necessary letter or two, and did such other things as occurred to him. It was long past one o'clock when he did go to bed, and even then he could not sleep. His mind was full of the dangerous expedition that he had plunged into within the last hours. His imagination saw vividly the picture of the long ice road through the wilderness, a hundred and fifty miles to the lonely trappers' shack, where a white man lay sick with a bag of diamonds on his breast—or perhaps by this time lay dead with the secret of immense riches lost with him. And the ice road might close to-morrow. Fred tossed and turned in bed, and more than once got up to look out the window for signs of a snowstorm.

But he went to sleep at last, and slept soundly till awakened by the rattle of his alarm-clock, set for half-past six. He had an early breakfast and packed his clothes. At nine o'clock he telephoned the real estate office where he was employed, and had no difficulty in getting his holidays extended another week. Business was dull just then.

At half-past nine he met Maurice and Peter, who were waiting for him with impatience. Macgregor had already left his toboggan at a sporting-goods store to be equipped with runners for use on ice.