ng yourself, Julius."

Savine, who did not answer her, remained standing until the hired hand
whom he had summoned, entered. "Ride your hardest to the camp and tell
Foreman Tom I'm coming over to take charge until Mr. Thurston, who has
met with an accident, recovers," he said. "He's to send a spare horse
and a couple of men to help the sleigh over the washed-out trail. Come
back at your best pace. I must reach the canyon before morning."

"Are you mad, Julius?" asked his sister-in-law when the men retired.
"It's even chances the excitement or the journey will kill you."

"Then I must take the chances," declared Savine. "While there was a
man I could trust to handle things, I let this weakness master me. Now
the poor fellow's helpless, somebody must take hold before chaos
ensues, and I haven't quite forgotten everything. You'll have to nurse
Geoffrey, and it's no use trying to scare me. Fill my big flask with
the old brandy and get my furs out."

Mrs. Savine saw further remonstrance would be useless. She considered
her brother-in-law more fit for his grave than to complete a great
undertaking, but he was clearly bent on having his way. When she
hinted something of her thoughts, he answered that even so he would
rather die at work in the canyon than tamely in his bed. So shivering
under a load of furs he departed in the sleigh, and after several
narrow escapes of an upset, reached the camp in the dusk of a nipping
morning.

"Help me out. Mr. Thurston, I am sorry to say, has met with a bad
accident, and you and I have got to finish this work without him," he
said to the anxious foreman. "From what he told me I can count upon
your doing the best that's in you, Tom."

"I won't go back on nothing Mr. Thurston said," was the quiet answer;
but when Tom from Mattawa left Savine, whose nerveless fingers spilled
half the contents of the silver cup he strove to fill, gasping beside
the stove in Thurston's quarters, he gravely shook his head.

Several days elapsed after Helen's departure for Vancouver before Mrs.
Savine, who had gone at once to the scene of the accident, considered
it judicious to inform her of Geoffrey's condition, and so it happened
that one evening Helen accompanied her hostess to witness the
performance of a Western dramatic company. Despite second-rate acting
the play was a pretty one, and each time the curtain went down Helen
found the combination of bright light, pretty dresses, laughter