With a poignant cry Ned vaulted into the sleigh. He was shocked with a horrible fear as he discovered cap and gauntlets removed and coat wide open. A quick glance filled him with increased alarm. Hands and face of the sleeper were white with the wax-like colour of the dead. Hastily he thrust on cap and gauntlets and closed the open coat. Arranging the robes in the cutter, he carried the drunken form to the vehicle and placed it upon the seat. Taking the robes and even the empty bags out of the sleigh, he wrapped them about his father and took his place beside him. Whirling his frost-coated drivers about, he sent them furiously down the hill, leaving the heavy team to follow at their own sedate pace.
He did not spare the willing brutes ahead and pulled them up at the door in a cloud of steam. Throwing the robes upon them, he carried his father in and laid him upon the floor. Rushing out, he brought in pails of snow and set to work massaging the frozen face and hands. Circulation once more established, he carried the still inert form to his bed. This accomplished, he went out to his team and stabled them. The dumb brutes wondered at the swift tenderness with which he groomed away the thick coat of frost.
"You are not hurt a whit," said he gratefully, as he watched them happily munching their oats. "And you saved Dad."
The gentle taps with which he bid them good-night were comforting to their faithful equine spirits.
Out into the darkness he stepped, missing with a sudden and strange acuteness the mute sympathy of the animals now shut in the stables. The night was colder than ever and breathless with the hush of the lowering temperature. The silence of the farmstead depressed him. He looked at the house. It was a mysterious shape in the darkness, sheltering within it the wreck so pitiably still. Entering, he sat down to his long vigil. It was a lonely night for Ned Pullar—the loneliest he had ever known.
XVII
HANK FOYLE, UNEXPECTED GUEST
Three weeks later Edward Pullar was sitting up for the first time since his unfortunate visit to Pellawa. The scars of his terrible exposure were losing their virulence and strength was creeping back into the emaciated limbs.
No conversation touching the lamentable adventure had taken place. Once only had the father referred to it in broken and pathetic apology that was instantly hushed by the son. With the gentle assiduity of a mother Ned had nursed his patient and nobody in the settlement was aware of the disgrace of Edward Pullar, or of his narrow escape from the White Death of the northern trails.
For Ned, the lapse was after all only one in many. It was the latest, only a little more disappointing, more unfortunate and with the addition of tragedy barely avoided. To the father it was all this and more, infinitely more. There was a fear at his heart. He was penitent as usual, with an almost childish contrition. The debauch was mysteriously clouded. All he could remember was the fact of draining Nick's flask. This was clear. After that he had faint intimations of a hellish thirst—some effort to satisfy it. Through all his secret musings there ran a fear, a vague foreboding, but he could not define it. Memory would not work. He dwelt in a state of suspense, the victim of an intangible but real Nemesis. He expected something inimical to strike. Ned could see that something unusual was preying upon his father's mind and it troubled him deeply.