a cry: he had trodden upon a man covered
and hidden by the snow.

It was Sandy Graff. How long he had been lying there, no one might tell;
a few moments more, and the last flicker of life would have twinkled
mercifully out. The doctor had him out of the snow in a moment, and in
the next had satisfied himself that Sandy was not dead.

Even as he leaned over the still white figure, feeling the slow faint
beating of the failing heart, the doctor was considering whether he
should take Sandy into the house or not. The decision was almost
instantaneous: it would be most inconvenient, and the Refuge was only a
stone's-throw away. So the doctor did not even disturb the household
with the news of what had happened. He and the driver wrapped the
unconscious figure in a buffalo-robe and laid it in the sleigh.

As the doctor was about to step into the sleigh, some one suddenly laid
a heavy hand upon his shoulder. He turned sharply, for he had not heard
the approaching footsteps, muffled by the thick snow, and he had been
too engrossed with attention to Sandy Graff to notice anything else.

It was young Harold Singelsby; his face was very white and drawn, and
in the absorption of his own suppressed agitation he did not even look
at Sandy. "Doctor," said he, in a hoarse, constrained voice, "for God's
sake, come home with me as quickly as you can: father's very sick!"

* * * * *

_I had often wondered how it is with a man when he closes his life to
this world. Looking upon the struggling efforts of a dying man to retain
his hold upon his body, I had often wondered whether his sliding to
unconsciousness was like the dissolving of the mind to sleep in this
life._

_That death was not like sleep was at such times patent enough--it was
patent enough that it was the antithesis of sleep. Sleep is peaceful;
death is convulsed--sleep is rest; death is separation._

_That which I here following read in the book as it lay open upon the
man's knees seemed in a way dark, broken, indistinct with a certain grim
obscurity; yet if I read truly therein I distinguished this great
difference between death and sleep: Sleep is the cessation of
consciousness from an interior life to exterior thought; death is the
cessation of consciousness from the exterior mind to an interior life._

* * * * *

When Sandy Graff opened his eyes once more, it was to find himself again
within the shelte