jest, and I think it was chiefly to please us
that he choked down a few spoonfuls of the very untempting stew we forced
on him. Once, too, when I tried to feed him his eyes twinkled, though his
lips were blanched, as he said:

"We are playing out our parts in a most unconventional fashion. Ralph
Lorimer, are you sure that it is not poison you are giving me?"

Perhaps he would have said more if I had followed his lead, but I did not
do so, and these two veiled references were all that passed between us on
the subject that most concerned us until almost the end. It was late one
night, but there was a beaten trail beneath us and we knew we were running
a race for Ormond's life, when at last a glimmer of light appeared among
the trunks and the sound of hurrying water increased in volume. We
quickened our dragging pace, and when Harry pounded violently on the door
of a log building an old man with bent shoulders and long white hair stood
before us.

"Ye'll come in, and very welcome," he said. "I heard ye coming down the
trail. Four men with a load between them--where are the lave o' ye? The
best that's in Hector's shanty is waiting ye."

There was an air of dignity about him which struck me, and I had heard
prospectors and surveyors talk about mad Hector of the crossing. When we
carried our burden in he knelt and laid back Ormond's under jacket of
deerskin before he saw to the broken leg with a dexterity that evinced a
knowledge of elementary surgery.

"Is this going to be the end of me?" asked Ormond languidly, and the old
man, turning his head, glanced toward me in warning as he answered:
"That's as the Lord wills. Yere friends will need to be careful. The leg's
no set that ill, but I'm suspecting trouble inside o' ye. With good
guidance ye should get over it. Lay him gently yonder while I slip on a
better lashing."

He crammed the stove with fuel until the hot pipe trembled to the draught,
and soon set a bounteous meal before us--fresh venison and smoked salmon
with new bread and dried berries--while he also prepared a broth for
Ormond, who drank a little greedily, and then lapsed into slumber. I was
for pushing on after a brief rest, but Hector thought differently.

"Neither man nor horse has been drowned while I kept this crossing," he
said, "and by the help o' Providence no man will. Can ye no hear the river
roaring to the boulders, and would ye have her wash ye out mangled out o'
human image into the bottomles