ng young fellow like him dying?" demanded
Ferrers.

"Then why doesn't he get better?"

"I don't know. But he'll come around all right. Don't worry
about that. Strong men don't go under from a cold in the head,
or from a bit of wheeze in the lungs."

"But the fever."

"That has to burn itself out, I reckon," replied the Nevadan.
"Reade, you'll be sick yourself next. Lay out the medicines, and
I'll give 'em, to the minute, while you get six hours' sleep."

"No, sir!" was Reade's quick retort.

"Then, before you do cave in, partner, suppose you pick out the
medicines that you want me to give you when you can't do anything
for yourself any longer."

Tom went back to his chair by the side of Harry's bunk.

Outdoors some of the men were clearing a path to the mine-shaft.
Not that it was worth while to try to do any work underground.
The rock at the tunnel heading was too stubborn to be moved by
anything less than dynamite.

"I'd get some lumber together, and make a pair of skis," suggested
Jim, the next day, "but what is the use? We'll have to have
twenty-four hours of freezing weather before we'll have a crust.
As soon as we can see snow that will bear a human being I'll start
for Dugout City."

"But not for dynamite," declared Tom.

"No; for a doctor, I suppose."

"A physician's visit is the only thing I'm interested in now,"
Tom declared, glancing at the bunk. "I'd give up any mine on
earth to be able to pull poor old Harry through."

On the fifth day, while the weather still remained too warm for
the forming of a snow-crust, Harry began to show signs of improvement.
He was gaunt and thin, but his skin felt less hot to the touch.
His eyes had lost some of the fever brightness, and he spoke
of the pain in his chest as being less severe than it had been.

"I've been an awful nuisance here," he whispered, weakly, as his
chum bent over him.

"Stow all that kind of talk," Reade ordered. "Just get your strength
back as fast as you can. Sleep all you can, too. Get a nap, now,
and maybe when you wake up you'll be hungry enough to want a little
something to eat."

"I don't want anything," Harry replied.

"He's a goner, sure!" gasped Tom Reade, inwardly, feeling a great
chill of fear creep up and down his spine. "It's the first time
in his life that I ever knew Harry to refuse to eat."

"The weather is coming on cold," Jim Ferrers reported that evening,
when he came back from the coon shack with T