n the
darkness. Instantly he recognized the body of a man--a man alive too,
but apparently unable to speak or move. Like lightning he had the door
closed. The vigour of youth seemed to leap into his old veins. The
light was soon burning again, to reveal to him the prostrate body of
his own son, ice-covered from head to foot, his hatless head like a
great snow cannon-ball, his face so iced up that it was scarcely
recognizable. No--he was unwounded and there was life in him. "I had
just to thaw his head out first," Uncle Eben said, "and then us rubbed
him and got something down his throat. He roused himself, got up, and
told us his dogs must be snarled up in t' woodpile on the hillside,
only a few minutes away, and he kept signing that there were a man,
possibly still alive, lashed on t' komatik." It was no night for the
old man to go out. "He'd be dead, bless you," before he got anywhere;
and it seemed impossible to let Sally go out again. The stranger must
surely be dead long ago. But, weak as he was, Sally would go. He could
stand now and was once more blundering toward the door. To live and
think he had let a man perish alongside was as impossible to one man
as to the other.

It was Uncle Eben who solved the problem. There were a dozen balls of
stout seal twine lying in the locker. The old man, unable longer to
haul wood or drive dogs himself, spent much of his time knitting up
gear for the boys. He put on Sally his own cap, coat, and mits, tied
the twine round his wrist, and then let him out to find the komatik
again if he could; while if he fell exhausted Uncle Eben could at
least follow the line and perhaps get him back again.

As events turned out they were justified in making the attempt. The
cold wind served only as a lash to Sally's reserve strength and his
grit. That night he certainly found himself again. He reached the
sledge, cut the traces he could not disentangle, and, keeping Surefoot
by him, he cleared the komatik of the woodpile. Once more he hitched
in the dogs, which he knew would make straight for the house, while he
piloted down that last hillside.

* * * * *

Patsy got well again, though his toes and fingers alike were badly
burned. Ky was not found till a few days later. He had evidently
wandered to the edge of the cliffs, which near the Jump fall
perpendicularly a hundred feet on to the rocky beach below, and had
slipped over in the darkness.

Uncle Eben's s