helper "Take Cloud-in-the-Sky and get wood; bring fresh branches. Then
clear one of the sleds, and we will start back with him in the early
morning."

Late Carscallen, looking at the skeleton-like figure, said: "He will
never get there."

"Yes, he will get there," was Hume's reply.

"But he is dying."

"He goes with me to Fort Providence."

"Ay, to Providence he goes, but not with you," said Late Carscallen,
doggedly.

Anger flashed in Hume's eye, but he said quietly "Get the wood,
Carscallen."

Hume was left alone with the starving Indian, who sat beside the fire
eating voraciously, and with the sufferer, who now was taking
mechanically a little biscuit sopped in brandy. For a few moments thus,
then his sunken eyes opened, and he looked dazedly at the man bending
above him. Suddenly there came into them a look of terror. "You--you--are
Jaspar Hume," his voice said in an awed whisper.

"Yes." The hands of the sub-factor chafed those of the other.

"But you said you were a friend, and come to save me."