BACK TO CEDAR CREEK.
declar, if you hain't 'most skeered me!' was Peter's exclamation. 'For sartin I never seed a ghost, but it looked like enough this time. Now, do tell what brought you so far from hum? Thirteen mile, if it's a rod. You ain't lookin' partic'ler spry, anyhow. Now, Arthur, doen't, poor lad, doen't.'
For he could not speak during a minute or two; his arm pressed heavily on the backwoodsman's sturdy shoulder, in the effort to steady the strong trembling that shook him from head to foot like a spasm of ague.
'Lost in the bush, you war? Well, that ain't agreeable nohow exactly;' and Peter betook himself to a fumbling in his capacious pocket for a tin flask, containing some reviving fluid. 'Here, take a pull—this'll fix you all right. Warn't it wonderful that I went my road of traps when I did, instead of early this mornin'. There's a providence in that, for sartin.'
Deep in Arthur's heart he acknowledged the same truth gratefully.
'You've got a plaguy touch of ague, likely,' added Peter considerately, willing to shift the responsibility of that trembling from the mind to the body. 'Campin' out is chill enough these nights. I han't much furder to go to the end of my blaze, and then I'll be back with you. So will you wait or come along?'
Arthur had too lately found human company to be willing to relinquish it, even with certainty of its return; he dreaded nothing so much as the same solitude whence he had just emerged; therefore he followed Peter, who over his shoulder carried a bag containing various bodies of minks, fishers, and other furry animals, snared in his traps, and subsequently knocked on the head by his tough service-rod.
That night Arthur found comfortable shelter in Peter's hut, and was initiated into many mysteries of a trapper's life by him and his half-Indian assistant. Next morning they guided him as far as a surveyor's post, on which was legibly written the names of four townships, which was the signal for the separation of the party. Arthur turned his face towards civilisation, along a blazed boundary line. The others plunged deeper into the woods, walking in the unsociable Indian file.
The blazed line went on fairly enough for some miles, over hillocks of hardwood, and across marshes of dank evergreens, where logs had been laid lengthwise for dry footing. At last Arthur thought he must be drawing near to a clearing, for light appeared through the dense veil of trees before him, as if some extensive break to the vast continuity of forest occurred beyond. Soon he stood on its verge. Ay, surely a clearing; but no human hands had been at work.