Hume was left alone with the starving Indian, who sat beside the fire eating voraciously, and with the sufferer, who now was taking mechanically a little biscuit sopped in brandy. For a few moments thus, then his sunken eyes opened, and he looked dazedly at the man bending above him. Suddenly there came into them a look of terror. “You—you—are Jaspar Hume,” his voice said in an awed whisper.
“Yes.” The hands of the sub-factor chafed those of the other.
“But you said you were a friend, and come to save me.”
“I have come to save you.”
There was a shiver of the sufferer’s body. This discovery would either make him stronger or kill him. Hume knew this, and said: “Lepage, the past is past and dead to me; let it be so to you.”
There was a pause.
“How—did you know—about me?”
“I was at Fort Providence. There came letters from the Hudson’s Bay Company, and from your wife, saying that you were making this journey, and were six months behind—”
“My wife—Rose!”
“I have a letter for you from her. She is on her way to Canada. We are to take you to her.”