e imp of Satan.
Sound and lithe and quick-handed as he was, he was no match for the
Colonel at his best. But the Colonel couldn't see well, and his brain
was on fire. He'd kill that young devil, and then he'd lie down and
sleep again.

Meanwhile Aurora mounted the high heavens; from a great corona in the
zenith all the sky was hung with banners, and the snow was stained as
if with blood. The Boy looked over his shoulder, and saw the huge
figure of his friend, bearing down upon him, with his discoloured face
rage-distorted, and murder in his tortured eyes. A moment's sense of
the monstrous spectacle fell so poignant upon the Boy, that he felt
dimly he must have been full half his life running this race with
death, followed by a maniac bent on murder, in a world whose winter was
strangely lit with the leaping fires of hell.

At last, on there in front, the cliff! Below it, the sharp bend in the
river, and although he couldn't see it yet, behind the cliff the
forest, and a little hand-sled bearing the means of life.

The Colonel was down again, but it wasn't safe to go near him just yet.
The Boy ran on, unpacked the sled, and went, axe in hand, along the
margin of the wood. Never before was a fire made so quickly. Then, with
the flask, back to the Colonel, almost as sound asleep as before.

The Boy never could recall much about the hours that followed. There
was nobody to help, so it must have been he who somehow got the Colonel
to the fire, got him to swallow some food, plastered his wounded face
over with the carbolic ointment, and got him into bed, for in the
morning all this was seen to have been done.

They stayed in camp that day to "rest up," and the Boy shot a rabbit.
The Colonel was coming round; the rest, or the ointment, or the
tea-leaf poultice, had been good for snowblindness. The generous
reserve of strength in his magnificent physique was quick to announce
itself. He was still "frightfully bunged up," but "I think we'll push
on to-morrow," he said that night, as he sat by the fire smoking before
turning in.

"Right you are!" said the Boy, who was mending the sled-runner. Neither
had referred to that encounter on the river-ice, that had ended in
bringing the Colonel where there was succour. Nothing was said, then or
for long after, in the way of deliberate recognition that the Boy had
saved his life. It wasn't necessary; they understood each other.

But in the evening, after the Boy had finished mendi