p--long--getting--to--th' old--camp."

The words seemed freezing on the lips which uttered them. Herb asked no
more questions. Silence was broken only by the rolling voice of the
land-slide, which had not yet ceased. Occasional volleys of loose earth
and stones, dislodged or shaken by the down-plunging granite, still
kept falling at intervals on the buried camp.

At one unusually loud rattle, Chris's lips moved again. In those strange
gutturals which the boys had heard in the hut, he rumbled an Indian
sentence, repeating it in English with scared, breaking breaths.

It was a prayer of her tribe which his mother had taught him to say at
morning and eve:--

"God--I--am--weak--Pity--me!"

"Heap--noise! Heap--dark!" he gasped. "Can't--find--th' old--camp."

"You're near it now, old chum," said Herb, trying to soothe him. "It's
the home-camp."

"We'll--camp--to-ge-ther?"

"We will again, sure."

* * * * *

The last stone pounded down on the heap above the old camp; and Herb
gently laid flat the body of the man he had sworn to shoot, closed the
malformed eyes, and turned away, that the fellows he was guiding might
not see his face.

CHAPTER XXIII.

BROTHERS' WORK.

They buried Chris upon Katahdin's breast. It was a good cemetery for
woodsmen, so Herb said, granite above and forest beneath.

But, good or bad, this was the one thing to be done. An attempt to
transfer the body to a distant settlement would be objectless labor;
for, as far as the guide knew, the half-breed had not a friend to be
interested in his fate, father and mother having died before Herb found
him in the snow-heaped forest.

There were three reliable witnesses, besides the man who was known to
have a grudge against him, to testify as to the cause and manner of his
death when the party returned to Greenville; so no suspicious finger
could point at Herb Heal, with a hint that he had carried out his old
threat.

How long Chris, in lonely, crazed repentance, had sheltered in the camp
on the mountain-side could only be a matter of guess. Herb inclined to
think that he had been there for weeks,--months, perhaps,--judging from
the withered spruce bed and the dry boughs and sticks upon the
camping-ground, which had evidently been gathered and broken for fuel.
His ravings made it clear that, on returning to the old haunts after
years of absence, he had missed the trail he used to know, and wandered
wearily