s glad that it grew
painful. He dare not glance at his comrade, he would not look at Tom,
and sat very still in torment for a space, while he felt that Alton's
arms had grown rigid by the cruel grip upon his hands.

Then the tension slackened, and the injured man drew in his breath with
a gasp, while Okanagan rose to one knee with great drops of sweat upon
his face.

"You got it?" said Alton in a low, strained voice, and nodded when the
axeman answered him.

"No," he said, a trifle huskily. "I'm going to try again. Lift him
over on his side, Charley."

Seaforth trembled a little as he did it, and glanced for just a moment
at his comrade's face. It was set and grey, but it went suddenly awry
into the grotesque semblance of a smile.

"Tom never was in a hurry. It's rough on you," he said. Still,
Seaforth, who had once held his own with men and women in quick retort
and graceful badinage in England, did not answer, but only pressed the
hard fingers that now lay somewhat limply in his palm and wondered
vaguely whether the ordeal would never be over. It was only then he
realized to the full all that Alton had been to him since the day he
limped, ragged and very hungry, into a little mining camp. His friends
in the old country had turned their backs on him, and Seaforth, who had
been hopeless and desperate then, knew that he owed a good deal more
than material prosperity to Alton of Somasco.

"Tom," he said hoarsely, "I think we're ready."

Okanagan said nothing, but stooped again, and Seaforth tightening his
grasp of the contracting fingers, heard the sound of uneven breathing
through the thud of snow upon the tent. He was by this time a little
more master of himself, and looked steadily down on the white face with
the grimly-set lips. His own was distorted into what was not a
sympathetic smile, but a grotesque grin, and there was every now and
then a reflection of it in the one awry with pain which looked up at
him. Then Alton drew in his breath with a little quivering sigh, and
there was a rattle as Okanagan dropped the steel.

"I want that bandage--quick. We are through now," he said.

Seaforth had afterwards a hazy recollection of helping him to twist the
strip of fabric about the firm white flesh, and that his hands made red
smears on Alton's deerskin jacket when he stooped and lifted him a
little. There was no bronze in his comrade's face, but in place of it
a curious yellow tinge, through which