y
fibre of him claimed life. He listened, breathlessly. Above the
knocking of his own heart he heard it again. No doubt at all. He
turned to Urquhart and shook him. "They are coming--they are
coming--we are going to be saved!" He was violently moved; tears were
streaming down his face. Urquhart, out of those still, aware,
dreadfully intelligent eyes, seemed to see them coming--whoever they
were. He too, and his pitiful broken members, were calling on life.

James, on his feet, shouted with might and main, and presently was
answered from near at hand. Then he saw Lingen and the guide wading
through the snow. "They have found us," he told Urquhart; "it's
Francis Lingen and the guide. How they've done it I don't pretend to
guess."

"They've got around the cornice," Urquhart said. "It can be done I
know." He seemed indifferent again, even annoyed again that he
couldn't be allowed to sleep. James thought it a pose, this time.

Lingen, out of breath but extremely triumphant, met James.

"Thank God," he said. James with lifted brows waved his head backward
to indicate the sufferer.

"He's very bad," he said. "How did you get him to come?" He meant the
guide.

Flaming Lingen said, "I made him. I was desperate. I've never done
such a thing before, but I laid hands on him."

"You are a brick," said James.

Lingen said, "It's something to know that you can throttle a man when
you want to badly enough. I hadn't the slightest idea. It's a thing I
never did before. I rather like it."

Throttled or not, the guide saved the situation. He saved it,
undisguisedly, for his own sake; for he had no zest for helping to
carry a bier over the Folgefond. They made a litter of alpen-stocks
and the mackintosh, and so between them carried Urquhart down the
mountain. No need to dwell on it. They reached the hotel at Odde about
midnight, but halfway to it they found help.

CHAPTER XXIV

URQUHART'S APOLOGY

Macartney was right when he said to Lucy, in talking over the
adventure, that Urquhart had no moral sense, though she had not then
been convinced. But she was to be convinced before she had done with
him.

He asked for her repeatedly, and with no regard at all to what had
happened. At last he was told that if he excited himself she would
leave the hotel. Vera Nugent told him that, having installed herself
his nurse. Vera, who knew nothing but suspected much, guessed that
Macartney had had as much of her brother as he car