They could set out on their search for the gold within a few weeks.

But Rod was firm.
"It would not be fair to mother," he declared.

"I must go home first, even if I have to arrange for a special sledge at Kenegami House to take me down to civilization." But even while he was stoutly declaring what it was his intention to do, fate was stealthily at work weaving another of her webs of destiny for Roderick Drew, and his friends' anxious eyes saw the first signs of it when they bade him good night.

For fever had laid its hand on the white youth, the fever that foreshadows death unless a surgeon is near, the fever of a wound going bad.

Even Mukoki, graduated by Nature, taught by half a century's battle with life in this great desolation of the North, knew that his own powers were now of no avail.
So Roderick was bundled in blankets, and the race for life to Kenegami House was begun.