nsible
in the drifting snow; had saved him from brooding on himself--the
beginning of madness--by compelling him to think for another. And
sometimes, as he had looked at the old man, his imagination had caught
the spirit of the legend of the Indians, and he had cried out, "O soul,
come back and give him memory--give him back his memory, Manitou the
mighty!"

Looking on the old man now, an impulse seized him. "Dear old man," he
said, speaking as one speaks to a child that cannot understand, "you
shall never want, while I have a penny, or have head or hands to work.
But is there no one that you care for or that cares for you, that you
remember, or that remembers you?"

The old man shook his head though not with understanding, and he laid a
hand on the young man's shoulder, and whispered:

"Once it was always snow, but now it is green, the land. I have seen
it--I have seen it once." His shaggy eyebrows gathered over, his eyes
searched, searched the face of John Bickersteth. "Once, so long ago--I
cannot think," he added helplessly.

"Dear old man," Bickersteth said gently, knowing he would not wholly
comprehend, "I am going to ask her--Alice--to marry me, and if she does,
she will help look after you, too. Neither of us would have been here
without the other, dear old man, and we shall not be separated. Whoever
you are, you are a gentleman, and you might have been my father or
hers--or hers."

He stopped suddenly. A thought had flashed through his mind, a thought
which stunned him, which passed like some powerful current through his
veins, shocked him, then gave him a palpitating life. It was a wild
thought, but yet why not--why not? There was the chance, the faint,
far-off chance. He caught the old man by the shoulders, and looked him
in the eyes, scanned his features, pushed back the hair from the rugged
forehead.

"Dear old man," he said, his voice shaking, "do you know what I'm
thinking? I'm thinking that you may be of those who went out to
the Arctic Sea with Sir John Franklin--with Sir John Franklin, you
understand. Did you know Sir John Franklin--is it true, dear old boy, is
it true? Are you one that has lived to tell the tale? Did you know Sir
John Franklin--is it--tell me, is it true?"

He let go the old man's shoulders, for over the face of the other
there had passed a change. It was strained and tense. The hands were
outstretched, the eyes were staring straight into the west and the
coming night.

"It