at.

"Oh, nothing much," he said shortly.

But he leaned back in his chair and immediately became absorbed in
thought that accentuated the multitude of fine lines about his eyes and
drew his lips together in a narrow line. Sophie sat regarding him with a
look of wonder.

This trifling incident, naturally, did not come under the notice of Mr.
Thompson. Conceivably he would not have noticed had he been present, nor
have been in any degree interested.

He was, as a matter of fact, fully occupied at that precise moment with
the painful and disagreeable consequences of attempting to split
kindling by lantern light. To be specific the axe had glanced and cut a
deep gash in one side of his foot.

At about the particular moment in which Sam Carr leaned back in his
chair and fell into that brown study of a matter that was to have a
far-reaching effect, Mr. Thompson was seated on his haunches on his
cabin floor, his hands stained with blood and a considerable trail of
red marking his progress from woodpile to cabin. His face was white, and
his hands rather shaky by the time he finished binding up the wound. The
cut stung and burned. When he essayed to move he found himself quite
effectually crippled.

For the first time in his twenty-five years of carefully directed
existence Mr. Thompson swore a loud, round, Anglo-Saxon oath. Whether
this relieved his pent-up feelings or not he appeared to suffer no
remorse for the burst of profanity. Instead, he rose and limped
painfully about the building of a fire and the preparation of his
supper.

CHAPTER VIII

--AND THE FRUITS THEREOF

Mr. Thompson slept fitfully that night. A hard day's paddling had left
him tired and sleepy, but the swarm of pain-devils in his slashed foot
destroyed his rest. When he got up at daylight and examined the wound
again he found himself afflicted with a badly swollen foot and ankle,
and a steady dull ache that extended upward past the knee. He was next
to helpless since every movement produced the most acute sort of
pain--sufficiently so that when he had made shift to get some breakfast
he could scarcely eat. In the course of his experiments in self-aid he
discovered that to lie flat on his back with the slashed foot raised
higher than his body gave a measure of ease. So he adopted this position
and stoically set out to endure the hurt. He lay in that position the
better part of the day--until, in fact, four in the afternoon brought
Sam Ca