THE CRIME AT BIG TREE PORTAGE
going over and over the events of the last two days. I had already seen enough to assure me that my companion was a very skilful detective, but the most ingenious part of his work, namely, the deductions by which he had pretended to reconstruct the personality of the criminal, had yet to be put to the test.
It was black dark, or nearly so, when at last a building loomed up in front of us, a faint light showing under the door.
"You there, Highamson?" called out November.
As there was no answer, my companion pushed it open and we entered the small wooden room, where, on a single table, a lamp burned dimly.
He turned it up and looked around.
A pack lay on the floor unopened, and a gun leant up in a corner.
"Just got in," commented November. "Has n't loosed up his pack yet."
He turned it over. A hatchet was thrust through the wide thongs which bound it. November drew it out.
"Put your thumb along that edge," he said. "Blunt? Yes? Yet he drove that old hatchet as
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