telegraph man, "I'm afraid he will freeze to death in the snow. He's
quite alive, you know--alive as you are; but I want help to bring him
in."

The other was attending to his work as well as to Trenholme. "Why can't
he come in?"

"He won't. I think he's gone out of his mind. He'll die if he's left.
It's a matter of life or death, I tell you. He's too strong for me to
manage alone. Someone must come too."

The brisk man looked at the engineer, and the French engineer looked at
him.

"What's he doing out there?"

"He's just out by the wood."

It ended in the two men finding snow-shoes and going with Trenholme
across the snow.

They all three peered through the dimness at the space between them and
the wood, and they saw nothing. They retraced the snow-shoe tracks and
came to the place where the irregular circuit had been made near the end
of the wood. There was no one there. They held up a lantern and flashed
it right and left, they shouted and wandered, searching into the edge of
the wood. The old man was not to be found.

"I dare say," said the telegraph man to Trenholme, "you'd do well to get
into a place where you don't live quite so much alone. 'T'aint good for