weakening breath, then rose again to sink once more,
like the last wind-gusts when the storm is over.

Suddenly his shrunken body shivered in every limb. The humming ceased.
His yellow teeth tapped upon each other in trouble and fear. He raised
himself to a squatting posture, with his knee-bones to his chin, the
wisps of hair tumbling upon his naked chest.

"It's dark--heap dark!" he whimpered, between long gasps. "Can't strike
the trail--can't find the home-camp. Herb--Herb Heal--ole pard--'twas I
took 'em--the skins. 'Twas--a dog's trick. Take it out--o' my hide--if
yer wants to--yah! Heap sick!"

Not a ray of sense was yet in the half-breed's eyes. An imaginary,
vengeance-dealing Herb was before him; but he never turned a glance
towards the real, and now forgiving, old chum, who leaned against the
wall not ten feet away. His voice dropped to a guttural rumble, in which
Indian sounds mingled with English.

But the flame at Herb's heart was quenched at the first whimpered word.
His stiffened muscles and lips relaxed. With a gurgle of sorrow, he
crossed the camp-floor, and dropped into a crawling position on the
faded spruces.

"Chris!" he cried thickly. "Chris,--poor old pard,--don't ye know me?
Look, man! Herb is right here--Herb Heal, yer old chum. You're 'heap
sick' for sure; but we'll haul you off to a settlement or to our camp,
and I'll bring Doc along in two days. He'll"--

But Cross-eyed Chris became past hearing, his flicker of strength had
failed; he keeled over, and lay, with his limp legs curled up, faint and
speechless, upon the dead evergreens.

"You ain't a-going to die!" gasped Herb defiantly. "I'll be jiggered if
you be, jest as I've found you! Say, boys! Cyrus! Neal! rub him a bit,
will ye? We ain't got no brandy, I'll build a fire, and warm some
coffee."

It was strange work for the hands of the Bostonian, and stranger yet for
those of young Farrar,--son of an English merchant-prince,--this
straightening and rubbing of a dying half-Indian, a "scum," as Herb
called him, drunkard, and thief. Yet there was no flash of hesitation on
Farrar's part, as they brought their warm friction to bear upon the
chill yellow skin, piebald from dirt and the stains of travel, as if it
were the very mission which had brought them to Katahdin.

They had grave thoughts meanwhile that the old mountain was decidedly
gloomy in its omens, first a thunder-storm and then a tragedy; for, rub
as they might with brotherl