ment? Poor Johnston! Lorimer, I
wonder, if we knew all, whether we should pity him?"

His face grew somber as he spoke, but it was Ormond who presently
dissipated the gloom by a humorous narrative of the doings of the vanished
mule, after which we went to sleep again. A pale blink of sunshine shone
down when we started south the next day, for we had agreed to march in
company, but the weary leagues lengthened indefinitely, and there was
still no sign of the eagerly expected trail leading to Macdonald's
Crossing, until, when we almost despaired of finding it, one of the party
assured us that we should reach it before the second nightfall. During the
morning Ormond and I lagged behind the others as we wound with much
precaution along the sides of an almost precipitous descent. He limped
from some small injury to his foot, made worse by exposure, and as it
happened a passing mention of Colonel Carrington stirred up the old
bitterness.

Why should this man enjoy so much while I had so little, I thought. I was
handicapped by poverty, and his wealth lay like an impassable barrier
between Grace and myself. Then, though I tried hard, I could not drive out
the reflection that all would have been different if he had not found our
camp. Our partner had gone down in the black pool; we could not save him,
but chance had made it easy to succor the one man who could bring me
sorrow in his necessity. Then, as I struggled to shake off the feeling of
sullen resentment, Ormond perhaps noticed my preoccupation, for he
remarked:

"In other circumstances how we should enjoy this prospect, Lorimer!"

We halted a few minutes, and I agreed with him as I glanced about me. A
great slope of snow ran upward above us, and as far as eye could see there
was a white confusion of glittering ranges. The footprints of our comrades
wound in zig-zags among deep drifts and outcrops of ice-touched rock
across the foreground, and perhaps twenty feet below the ledge on which we
stood a smooth slide of frozen snow dropped steeply toward the edge of a
precipice, through a gully in which we could see the tops of the climbing
pines far beneath. A few small clumps of bushes and spruce rose out of
this snow.

"It's an awkward place for a lame man, but if we wait much longer we will
lose the others," said Ormond, pointing to the distant figures struggling
across the dazzling incline.

He moved a few steps, then there was a stumble and a sudden cry. I saw him
fo