again, and he forgot how cold, how maliciously cold, he had been; he
forgot how dreadful that hour was before he became warm; when he was
pierced by myriad needles through the body, and there was an incredible
aching at his heart.

And yet something kept thundering on his body, and a harsh voice shrieked
at him, and there were many lights dancing over his shut eyes; and then
curtains of darkness were dropped, and centuries of oblivion came; and
then--then his eyes opened to a comforting silence, and some one was
putting brandy between his teeth, and after a time he heard a voice say:
"'Bien,' you see he was a murderer, but he save his captor. 'Voila,'
such a heathen! But you will, all the same, bring him to justice--you
call it that? But we shall see."

Then some one replied, and the words passed through an outer web of
darkness and an inner haze of dreams. "The feet of Little Hammer were
like wood on the floor when you brought the two in, Pretty Pierre--and
lucky for them you found them. . . . The thing would read right in a
book, but it's not according to the run of things up here, not by a
damned sight!"

"Private Bradshaw," said the first voice again, "you do not know Little
Hammer, nor that story of him. You wait for the trial. I have something
to say. You think Little Hammer care for the prison, the rope?--Ah, when
a man wait five years to kill--so! and it is done, he is glad sometimes
when it is all over. Sergeant Gellatly there will wish he went to sleep
forever in the snow, if Little Hammer come to the rope. Yes, I think."

And Sergeant Gellatly's brain was so numbed that he did not grasp the
meaning of the words, though he said them over and over again. . . .