“'All the bays are much alike,' he explained; 'and when the Smoky Pool was frozen, I lost my only clue. I was getting always farther away on my hunt, when the Lord turned and led me here by His pillar of fire.'
“And the three of us, standing there in the dark of earliest dawn beneath the Great Bear, we keep still and say three—four prayers from ourselves to that same Jehovah who had guided Monsieur Moses, for the making of us safe.”
Prunier ceased abruptly and knocked out his pipe upon the hearth-side, then gazed reminiscently out into the falling snow.
I was busy with the picture in my brain of that blackened hulk, the frail woman and her almost helpless companion standing there in the midst of that gray waste of coming dawn. But the Lad's mind had already gone scouting on before.
“And were you made safe, Prunier?” he asked.
“Oh, certainement!” said the guide, almost drolly. “Voyez, I am here.”
“Then tell us—” commanded the insatiable youth.
“Mais, cette une longue histoire,” was all we heard.