By a slight effort he found that he could turn his head sufficiently to look through a hole on a level with his eyes in the side of the box.

The sledge had turned from the dark trail into the lighted street, and stopped at last before a brilliantly lighted front from which there issued the sound of coarse voices, of laughter and half-drunken song.
One of his captors went into the bar while the other seated himself on the box, with one leg shutting out Philip's vision by dangling it over the hole through which he was looking.
"What's up, Fingy ?" inquired a voice.
"Wekusko," replied the man on the box, in the husky, flesh-smothered tones of the person who had entered last into the cabin.
"Another dead one up there, eh ?" persisted the same voice.
"No.

Maps 'n' things f'r Hodges, up at the camp.

Devil of a hurry, ain't he, to order us up at night?
Tell -- -- to hustle out with the bottle, will you ?" The speaker sent the lash of his whip snapping through the air in place of supplying a name.
"Maps and things--for Hodges--Wekusko!" gasped Philip inwardly.
He listened for further information.

None came, and soon the man called Fingy jumped from the box, cracked his whip with a wheezing command to the dogs, and the sledge moved on.
And so his captors were taking him to Wekusko ?--and more than that, to Hodges, chief of construction, whose life had been attempted by the prisoner whom Inspector MacGregor had ordered him to bring down! Had Fingy spoken the truth?
And, if so, was this another part of the mysterious plot foreseen by the inspector?
During the next half hour, in which the sledge traveled steadily over the smooth, hard trail into the north, Philip asked himself these and a score of other questions equally perplexing.