ahead and
supporting the weak between them. More than once Clark himself tottered
where he beat the ice at the apex of the line. Some swooned and would
have drowned had they not been dragged across the canoe and chafed back
to consciousness. By inches the water shallowed. Clark reached the high
ground, and then Bill Cowan, with a man on each shoulder. Then others
endured to the shallows to fall heavily in the crumbled ice and be
dragged out before they died. But at length, by God's grace, the whole
regiment was on the land. Fires would not revive some, but Clark himself
seized a fainting man by the arms and walked him up and down in the
sunlight until his blood ran again.

It was a glorious day, a day when the sap ran in the maples, and the sun
soared upwards in a sky of the palest blue. All this we saw through the
tracery of the leafless branches,--a mirthless, shivering crowd, crept
through a hell of weather into the Hair Buyer's very lair. Had he
neither heard nor seen?

Down the steel-blue lane of water between the ice came a canoe. Our
stunted senses perceived it, unresponsive. A man cried out (it was Tom
McChesney); now some of them had leaped into the pirogue, now they were
returning. In the towed canoe two fat and stolid squaws and a pappoose
were huddled, and beside them--God be praised!--food. A piece of
buffalo on its way to town, and in the end compartment of the boat tallow
and bear's grease lay revealed by two blows of the tomahawk. The
kettles--long disused--were fetched, and broth made and fed in sips to
the weakest, while the strongest looked on and smiled in an agony of
self-restraint. It was a fearful thing to see men whose legs had refused
service struggle to their feet when they had drunk the steaming, greasy
mixture. And the Colonel, standing by the river's edge, turned his face
away--down-stream. And then, as often, I saw the other side of the man.
Suddenly he looked at me, standing wistful at his side.

"They have cursed me," said he, by way of a question, "they have cursed
me every day." And seeing me silent, he insisted, "Tell me, is it not
so, Davy?"

"It is so," I said, wondering that he should pry, "but it was while they
suffered. And--and some refrained."

"And you?" he asked queerly.

"I--I could not, sir. For I asked leave to come."

"If they have condemned me to a thousand hells," said he,
dispassionately, "I should not blame them." Again he looked at me. "Do
you understand wha