There was no help for it except in telling her the shocking truth, and Prime was not equal to that. So he reconciled himself as best he could to the enforced delay, hoping that the tender conscience would not demand too much time.
Almost at once the owner of the conscience suggested that they make a round through the adjoining forest in an attempt to discover the camp of the missing men. Prime acceded cheerfully enough, though he was impatient to examine the canoe-load, in which he was hoping there might prove to be a supply of tobacco. For the better part of the forenoon they quartered the forest around and about between the river and the lake in widening circles, missing nothing but the glade of horrors, which Prime took good care to avoid. At noon they came back to the canoe-landing and made a frugal meal on the remains of their own store of food.
"We are too punctiliously foolish," Prime declared when the second meal without its tobacco aftermath had been endured. "You say we are obliged to wait, and in that case we shall have to borrow, sooner or later. I don't see any reason why we shouldn't begin it now. We can explain everything, you know; and, besides, I have money with which to pay for what we take."
"But your money isn't Canadian money," was the ready objection voiced by the tender conscience.
Prime's laugh did not ring quite true. "That is where you are mistaken," he retorted. "It is good English gold, in sovereigns."
If the young woman were surprised to learn that a man who had expected to motor out of Canada in a day or two at the most had supplied himself with a stock of English sovereigns, she did not question the fact. But for fear she might, Prime went on hastily:
"I always like to be prepared for all kinds of emergencies when I leave home, and this time I wasn't sure just where I was going to bring up, you know—after Grider had changed his mind as to our starting-point."
The evasion served its purpose, and the young woman assented to an immediate examination of the canoe-load. Prime helped her down the steep bank, and they began to rummage, spreading their findings out on the little beach. As Prime had intimated, there was a liberal stock of provisions—jerked deer-meat, smoke-cured bacon, flour, meal, salt, baking-powder, tea, and sugar, but no coffee, a few tins of vegetables, a small sack of potatoes, and, last but not least, a canvas-covered mass of something which they decided was pemmican.
Rummaging further, the precious tobacco came to light—two huge twists of it hidden in the centre of one of the two remaining blanket-rolls. Prime stopped right where he was, crumbled a bit of the dried leaf in his hands, and made a cigarette, his companion looking on with a little lip-curl which might have been of derision or merely of amusement.
"Is it good?" she asked, when he had inhaled the first deep breath.