see him alone, giving no names.

"My stars, if it isn't the wanderers returned!" exclaimed their host, as
he entered and saw the two. "Where's my boy? Hiding behind the window
curtain?"

But the expression on his visitors' faces suddenly checked his speech,
and turning pale, Benjamin Crane dropped into the nearest chair.

"What is it?" he whispered, in a shaking voice. "I know it's bad news.
Is Peter----"

"Yes," said Shelby, gently, but feeling that the shortest statement was
most merciful. "The Labrador got him."

By a strange locution, Labrador, as we call it, is spoken of up there as
The Labrador, and the phrase gives a sinister sound to the name. It
personifies it, and makes it seem like a living menace, a sentient
danger.

"Tell me about it," said Benjamin Crane, and his tense, strained voice
told more of his grief than any outburst could have done.

* * * * *

"Lost in the snow! My little Peter Boots----" he said, after he had
listened in silence to their broken recital. "Tell me more," he urged,
and eagerly drank in any details they could give him of the tragedy and
also of the doings of the party before that last, fatal day.

Blair looked at him in secret amazement. How could the man take it so
calmly? But Shelby, a deeper student of human character, understood how
the fearful shock of tragedy had stunned the loving father-heart. Slowly
and quietly, Shelby related many incidents of the trip, drew word
pictures of Peter in his gayest moods, told tales of his courage,
bravery and unfailing good spirits.

But, though these things interested Crane and held his attention, there
was no way to lessen the poignant sorrow of the last story,--the account
of the terrible storm and the awful fate of Peter.

Shelby broke down, and Blair finished, with a few broken sentences.

The deep grief of the two, the sincere love of Peter and sorrow at his
death proved better than protestations that they had done all mortal
effort could do.

"I am not sure, sir," Shelby said, finally, "that we acted wisely, but
it seemed the only course to take. We could not persuade any one to go
for us or with us in search of Peter's body, until March at the
earliest. To go alone, was mere suicide, and though I was tempted to do
even that, rather than to return without him, it would not have been
allowed."

"Oh, I understand perfectly," Crane said, quickly, "I wouldn't have had
you do otherwise than j