Prime shook his head. "No, it was too dark," he said; "and, anyway, I'm not sure there were any."
"Never mind," was the cheerful rejoinder. "We have enough without them, and, really, I am beginning to get the knack of the pan-bread. If you don't say it is better this evening—" She broke off suddenly. He had sat down by the fire and was nursing his knees to keep them from knocking together. "Why, what is the matter with you? You are as pale as a sheet."
"I—I stumbled over something and fell down," he explained hesitantly. "It wasn't much of a fall, but it seemed to shake me up a good bit. I'll be all right in a minute or two."
"You are simply tired to death," she put in sympathetically. "The long tramp this afternoon was too much for you."
Prime resented the sympathy. He was not willing to admit that he could not endure as much as she could—as much as any mere woman could.
"I'm not especially tired," he denied; and to prove it he began to eat as if he were hungry, and to talk, and to make his companion talk, of things as far as possible removed from the sombre heart of a Canadian forest.
Immediately after supper he began to build another sleeping-shelter, though the young woman insisted that it was ridiculous for him to feel that he was obliged to do this at every fresh stopping-place. None the less, he persevered, partly because the work relieved him of the necessity of trying to keep up appearances. Fortunately, Miss Millington confessed herself weary enough to go to bed early, and after she left him Prime sat before the fire, smoking the dust out of his tobacco-pouch and formulating his plan for the keeping of the horrid secret.
The plan was simple enough, asking only for time and a sufficient quantity—and quality—of nerve. When he could be sure that his camp-mate was safely asleep he would go back to the glade and dispose of the two dead men in some way so that she would never know of their existence alive or dead.
The waiting proved to be a terrific strain; the more so since the conditions were strictly compelling. The chance to secure the ownerless and well-stocked canoe was by no means to be lost, but Prime saw difficulties ahead. His companion would wish to know a lot of things that she must not be told, and he was well assured that she would have to be convinced of their right to take the canoe before she would consent to be an accomplice in the taking. This meant delay, which in its turn rigidly imposed the complete effacement of all traces of the tragedy. He was waiting to begin the effacement.
By the time his tobacco was gone he was quivering with a nervous impatience to be up and at it and have it over with. After the crackling fire died down the forest silence was unbroken. The young woman was asleep; he could hear her regular breathing. But the time was not yet ripe. The moon had risen, but it was not yet high enough to pour its rays into the tree-sheltered glade, and without its light to aid him the horrible thing he had to do would be still more horrible.