e was so habituated, the body which usually seemed the
larger part of himself, might have been no more than a thought or a
dream, so intent was he upon another sort of reality. He was regardless
of it all, even of the heat that, at the same time, scorched him and
made him shiver. He thought of the words that he--he, Alec
Trenholme--had lifted up his voice to say, waking the echoes of the
snow-muffled silence with proclamation of--He tried not to remember what
he had proclaimed, feeling crushed with a new knowledge of his own
falseness; and when perforce the thought came upon him of the invisible
Actor in the night's drama whose presence, whose action, he had been so
strenuously asserting, he was like a man in pain who does not know what
remedy to try; and his mood was tense, he sought only relief. He essayed
one thought and another to reason away the cloud that was upon him; and
then he tried saying his prayers, which of late had fallen somewhat into
disuse. It was only by way of a try to see if it would do any good; and
he did not give himself much time, for he felt that he must go out again
to try to bring in the old man.

Before he had put on his fur cap a second time, however, he heard the
whistle of the engine he had been expecting now for nearly twenty-four
hours. It came like a sudden trumpet-sound from the outside world to
call him back to his ordinary thoughts and deeds. For the first moment
he felt impatient at it; the second he was glad, for there would
certainly be some one with it who could aid him in using force, if
necessary, to bring the old man to spend the remainder of the night
within doors.

Trenholme saw the black and fiery monster come on into his dark and
silent white world. It shook a great plume of flaming smoke above its
snorting head, and by the light of the blazing jewel in its front he saw
that the iron plough it drove before it was casting the snow in misty
fountains to right and left.

When the engine stopped, Trenholme found that there was a small car with
it, containing about twenty men sent to dig out the drifts where snow
sheds had given way. These were chiefly French Canadians of a rather low
type. The engine-driver was a Frenchman too; but there was a brisk
English-speaking man whose business it was to set the disordered
telegraph system to rights. He came into the station-room to test its
condition at this point of the route. As there was a stove in their car,
only a few of the m