They went on through thickening timber, until at last a log house came into sight. In front of it stood two sledges, and a pack of snapping, snarling dogs were scuffling in the snow. Lisle was devoutly thankful when he opened the door and helped the lad into a log-walled room where four men, two of whom wore furs, were talking. The air was dry and strongly heated, besides being heavy with tobacco smoke and Crestwick sank limply into a chair. Gasping hard, he leaned forward, as if unable to hold himself upright; but Lisle was not alarmed: he had suffered at times, when exhausted, from the reaction that follows the change from the bitter cold outside to the stuffiness of a stove-heated room.
“Played out; I’d some trouble to get him along,” he explained to the men. “We’re going on to the claims at the gulch to-morrow.” Then he addressed the two in furs: “I guess you’ll take me out a letter?”
“Why, of course; but you’ll have to hustle,” said one of them, and Lisle turned to a man in a deerskin jacket whom he took for the agent.
“Can you give me some paper?”
“Sure! Sit down right here.”
It was not easy to write with stiffened fingers or to collect his thoughts with his head swimming from the change of temperature, but he informed Nasmyth briefly of what he had heard and asked how much truth there was in it. He added that he would have started for England forthwith, only that he could not be sure that this was necessary, and to leave his work unfinished might jeopardize the interests of people who had staked a good deal of money on the success of his schemes. Nevertheless he would come at once, if Nasmyth considered the match likely to be brought about and would cable him at Victoria, from whence a message would reach him. In the meanwhile, Nasmyth could make such use of their knowledge of Gladwyne’s treachery as he thought judicious.
Shortly after he had written the letter the two men in furs set out, and when the sound of their departure had died away the agent addressed his guests.
“I’ll fix you some supper; you look as if you needed it. Rustle round, Larry, and get the frying-pan on.”
They ate an excellent meal and shortly afterward Crestwick crawled into a wooden bunk, where he reveled in the unusual warmth and the softness of a mattress filled with swamp-hay. He had never lain down to rest in England with the delicious sense of physical comfort that now crept over his worn-out body.