you
please, Philip!"

He loosened the man's coat and shirt, and a few moments later,
when Philip brought a towel and a basin of water, he rose from his
examination.

"Just in time--as I said before," he exclaimed with satisfaction. "You'd
never have heard another 'Pierre Thoreau' out of him, Philip," he went
on, speaking the young man's name as it he had been accustomed to doing
it for a long time. "Wound on the head--skull sound--loss of blood from
over-exertion. We'll have him drinking coffee within an hour if you'll
make some."

The doctor rolled up his shirt sleeves and began to wash away the blood.

"A good-looking chap," he said over his shoulder. "Face clean cut, fine
mouth, a frontal bone that must have brain behind it, square chin--" He
broke off to ask: "What do you suppose happened to him?"

"Haven't got the slightest idea," said Philip, putting the coffee pot on
the stove. "A blow, isn't it?"

Philip was turning up the wick of the lamp when a sudden startled cry
came from the bedside. Something in it, low and suppressed, made him
turn so quickly that by a clumsy twist of his fingers the lamp was
extinguished. He lighted it again and faced the doctor. McGill was upon
his knees, terribly pale.

"Good Heaven!" he gasped. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing, nothing, Phil--it was he! He let it out of him so unexpectedly
that it startled me."

"I thought it was your voice," said Philip.

"No, no, it was his. See, he is returning to consciousness."

The wounded man's eyes opened slowly, and closed again. He heaved a
great sigh and stretched out his arms as if about to awaken from a deep
slumber. The doctor sprang to his feet.

"We must have ice, Phil--finely chopped ice from the creek down there.
Will you take the ax and those two pails and bring back both pails full?
No hurry, but we'll need it within an hour."

Philip bundled himself in his coat and went out with the ax and pails.

"Ice!" he muttered to himself. "Now what can he want of ice?"

He dug down through three feet of snow and chopped for half an hour.
When he returned to the cabin the wounded man was bolstered up in bed,
and the doctor was pacing back and forth across the room, evidently
worked to a high pitch of excitement.

"Murder--robbery--outrage! Right under our noses, that's what it was!"
he cried. "Pierre Thoreau is dead--killed by the scoundrels who
left this man for dead beside him! They set upon them late yesterday
afternoon