closing of the railway offices.

"When you strike your camp, put out the fires," was the aphorism.

Ingolby stopped humming to himself as the words came to his memory again.
Bending his head in thought for a moment, he stood still, cogitating.

"The dear old fellow was right," he said presently aloud with uplifted
head. "I struck camp, but I didn't put out the fires. There's a lot of
that in life."

That is what had happened also to Gabriel Druse and his daughter.
They had struck camp, but had not put out the camp-fires. That which
had been done by the River Starzke came again in its appointed time.
The untended, unguarded fire may spread devastation and ruin, following
with angry freedom the marching feet of those who builded it.

"Yes, you've got to put out your fires when you quit the bivouac,"
continued Ingolby aloud, as he gazed ahead of him through the opening
greenery, beyond which lay Gabriel Druse's home. Where he was the woods
were thick, and here and there on either side it was almost impenetrable.
Few people ever came through this wood. It belonged in greater part to
Gabriel Druse, and in lesser part to the Hudson's Bay Company and the
Government; and as the land was not valuable till it was cleared, and
there was plenty of prairie land to be had, from which neither stick nor
stump must be removed, these woods were very lonely. Occasionally a
trapper or a sportsman wandered through them, but just here where Ingolby
was none ever loitered. It was too thick for game, there was no roadway
leading anywhere, but only an overgrown path, used in the old days by
Indians. It was this path which Ingolby trod with eager steps.