A SNOW-BLIND MAN
WHEN the next day dawned, a soft warm day, holding in it all the promise of the Northland spring, Dick Bracknell was in no condition to travel. He was clearly much weaker, and at times he lapsed into delirium during which the hearts of two of those with him were wrung. The feverish babble was of nothing relating to his life in the North, but about his boyhood at Harrow Fell, and of his first meeting with Joy. More than once Joy was unable to restrain her tears, and as the day wore on, it was evident that the strain was telling upon her.
Several times Roger Bracknell begged her to leave the sick man and rest, but she shook her head.
“No,” she whispered on the last occasion. “No! Look at him. It will not be very long. I think I should like to be with him, when—when—— It will help him, you know,” she concluded hastily.
“Yes,” he admitted, “you are quite right. He told me in that lucid interval that these moments with you by his side were among the happiest in his life.”
She looked down at the drawn face, her eyes flooding with sudden tears. She did not love him, but there was a great pity in her heart for the wayward man whose life had taken the wrong turn, and whose nature as she now knew was as full of generous good as of desperate evil. She prayed for him silently, and leaving her with bowed head, Roger Bracknell walked slowly away.
At the outer edge of the camp he met Sibou. The latter waved a hand towards the river, on the frozen surface of which tiny streams of water were beginning to run.
“It is the spring,” he said. “If we do not leave today the ice may not hold.”
“We cannot leave today, Sibou.”
“No,” replied the Indian. “We wait for death. Is it not so?”