“Wait!” he said.
Something in the seriousness of his manner drew a quick look of apprehension over the other's face.
“I want to talk with you,” continued Philip. “Let us walk a little way down the trail.”
The doctor eyed him suspiciously as they turned away from the cabin.
“See here, Phil Steele,” he said, and there was a hard ring in his voice, “I've had all sorts of confidence in you, and I've told you more, perhaps, than I ought. I don't suppose you have a suspicion that you ought to break it?”
“No, it isn't that,” replied Philip, laughing a little uneasily. “I'm glad you got away with Falkner, and so far as I am concerned no one will ever know what has happened. It's I who want to place a little confidence in you now. I am positively at my wits' end, and all over a situation which seems to place you and me in a class by ourselves—sort of brothers in trouble, you know,” and he told McGill, briefly, of Isobel, and his search for her.
“I lost them between Lac Bain and Fort Churchill,” he finished. “The two sledges separated, one continuing to Churchill, and the other turning into the South. I followed the Churchill sledge—and was wrong. When I came back the snow had covered the other trail.”
The little professor stopped suddenly, and squared himself directly in Philip's path.
“You don't say!” he gasped. There was a look of amazement on his face.
“What a wonderfully little world this is, Phil,” he added, smiling in a curious way. “What a wonderfully, wonderfully little world it is! It's only a playground, after all, and the funny part of it is that it is not even large enough to play a game of hide-and-seek in, successfully. I've proved that beyond question. And here—you—”