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+Project Gutenberg’s The March Of The White Guard, by Gilbert Parker
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The March Of The White Guard
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: October 18, 2006 [EBook #6223]
+Last Updated: August 27, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARCH OF THE WHITE GUARD ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MARCH OF THE WHITE GUARD
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+“Ask Mr. Hume to come here for a moment, Gosse,” said Field, the chief
+factor, as he turned from the frosty window of his office at Fort
+Providence, one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s posts. The servant,
+or more properly, Orderly-Sergeant Gosse, late of the Scots Guards,
+departed on his errand, glancing curiously at his master’s face as he
+did so. The chief factor, as he turned round, unclasped his hands from
+behind him, took a few steps forward, then standing still in the centre
+of the room, read carefully through a letter which he had held in the
+fingers of his right hand for the last ten minutes as he scanned the
+wastes of snow stretching away beyond Great Slave Lake to the arctic
+circle. He meditated a moment, went back to the window, looked out
+again, shook his head negatively, and with a sigh, walked over to the
+huge fireplace. He stood thoughtfully considering the floor until the
+door opened and sub-factor Jaspar Hume entered.
+
+The factor looked up and said: “Hume, I’ve something here that’s been
+worrying me a bit. This letter came in the monthly batch this morning.
+It is from a woman. The company sends another commending the cause of
+the woman and urging us to do all that is possible to meet her wishes.
+It seems that her husband is a civil engineer of considerable fame. He
+had a commission to explore the Coppermine region and a portion of the
+Barren Grounds. He was to be gone six months. He has been gone a
+year. He left Fort Good Hope, skirted Great Bear Lake, and reached the
+Coppermine River. Then he sent back all of the Indians who accompanied
+him but two, they bearing the message that he would make the Great Fish
+River and come down by Great Slave Lake to Fort Providence. That was
+nine months ago. He has not come here, nor to any other of the forts,
+so far as is known, nor has any word been received from him. His wife,
+backed by the H.B.C., urges that a relief party be sent to look for him.
+They and she forget that this is the arctic region, and that the task is
+a well-nigh hopeless one. He ought to have been here six months ago. Now
+how can we do anything? Our fort is small, and there is always danger of
+trouble with the Indians. We can’t force men to join a relief party like
+this, and who will volunteer? Who would lead such a party and who will
+make up the party to be led?”
+
+The brown face of Jaspar Hume was not mobile. It changed in expression
+but seldom; it preserved a steady and satisfying character of
+intelligence and force. The eyes, however, were of an inquiring,
+debating kind, that moved from one thing to another as if to get a
+sense of balance before opinion or judgment was expressed. The face
+had remained impassive, but the eyes had kindled a little as the factor
+talked. To the factor’s despairing question there was not an immediate
+reply. The eyes were debating. But they suddenly steadied and Jaspar
+Hume said sententiously: “A relief party should go.”
+
+“Yes, yes, but who is to lead them?”
+
+Again the eyes debated.
+
+“Read her letter,” said the factor, handing it over. Jaspar Hume took it
+and mechanically scanned it. The factor had moved towards the table
+for his pipe or he would have seen the other start, and his nostrils
+slightly quiver, as his eyes grew conscious of what they were seeing.
+Turning quickly, Hume walked towards the window as though for more
+light, and with his back to the factor he read the letter. Then he
+turned and said: “I think this thing should be done.”
+
+The factor shrugged his shoulders slightly. “Well, as to that, I think
+so too, but thinking and doing are two different things, Hume.”
+
+“Will you leave the matter in my hands until the morning?”
+
+“Yes, of course, and glad to do so. You are the only man who can arrange
+the affair, if it is to be done at all. But I tell you, as you know,
+that everything will depend upon a leader, even if you secure the
+men.... So you had better keep the letter for to-night. It may help you
+to get the men together. A woman’s handwriting will do more than a man’s
+word any time.”
+
+Jaspar Hume’s eyes had been looking at the factor, but they were
+studying something else. His face seemed not quite so fresh as it was a
+few minutes before.
+
+“I will see you at ten o’clock to-morrow morning, Mr. Field,” he said
+quietly. “Will you let Gosse come to me in an hour?”
+
+“Certainly. Good-night.”
+
+Jaspar Hume let himself out. He walked across a small square to a log
+house and opened a door which creaked and shrieked with the frost. A dog
+sprang upon him as he did so, and rubbed its head against his breast. He
+touched the head as if it had been that of a child, and said: “Lie down,
+Bouche.”
+
+It did so, but it watched him as he doffed his dogskin cap and buffalo
+coat. He looked round the room slowly once as though he wished to fix
+it clearly and deeply in his mind. Then he sat down and held near the
+firelight the letter the factor had given him. His features grew stern
+and set as he read it. Once he paused in the reading and looked into the
+fire, drawing his breath sharply between his teeth. Then he read it to
+the end without a sign. A pause, and he said aloud: “So this is how the
+lines meet again, Varre Lepage!” He read the last sentence of the letter
+aloud:
+
+   In the hope that you may soon give me good news of my husband,
+   I am, with all respect,
+
+               Faithfully yours,
+
+                       ROSE LEPAGE.
+
+Again he repeated: “With all respect, faithfully yours, Rose Lepage.”
+
+The dog Bouche looked up. Perhaps it detected something unusual in
+the voice. It rose, came over, and laid its head on its master’s knee.
+Hume’s hand fell gently on the head, and he said to the fire: “Ah, Rose
+Lepage, you can write to Factor Field what you dare not write to your
+husband if you knew. You might say to him then, ‘With all love,’ but not
+‘With all respect.’”
+
+He folded the letter and put it in his pocket. Then he took the dog’s
+head between his hands and said: “Listen, Bouche, and I will tell you a
+story.” The dog blinked, and pushed its nose against his arm.
+
+“Ten years ago two young men who had studied and graduated together at
+the same college were struggling together in their profession as civil
+engineers. One was Clive Lepage and the other was Jaspar Hume. The one
+was brilliant and persuasive, the other, persistent and studious. Lepage
+could have succeeded in any profession; Hume had only heart and mind for
+one.
+
+“Only for one, Bouche, you understand. He lived in it, he loved it, he
+saw great things to be achieved in it. He had got an idea. He worked at
+it night and day, he thought it out, he developed it, he perfected it,
+he was ready to give it to the world. But he was seized with illness,
+became blind, and was ordered to a warm climate for a year. He left his
+idea, his invention, behind him--his complete idea. While he was gone
+his bosom friend stole his perfected idea--yes, stole it, and sold it
+for twenty thousand dollars. He was called a genius, a great inventor.
+And then he married her. You don’t know her, Bouche. You never saw
+beautiful Rose Varcoe, who, liking two men, chose the one who was
+handsome and brilliant, and whom the world called a genius. Why didn’t
+Jaspar Hume expose him, Bouche? Proof is not always easy, and then he
+had to think of her. One has to think of a woman in such a case, Bouche.
+Even a dog can see that.”
+
+He was silent for a moment, and then he said: “Come, Bouche. You will
+keep secret what I show you.”
+
+He went to a large box in the corner, unlocked it, and took out a model
+made of brass and copper and smooth but unpolished wood.
+
+“After ten years of banishment, Bouche, Hume has worked out another
+idea, you see. It should be worth ten times the other, and the world
+called the other the work of a genius, dog.”
+
+Then he became silent, the animal watching him the while. It had seen
+him working at this model for many a day, but had never heard him talk
+so much at a time as he had done this last ten minutes. He was generally
+a silent man--decisive even to severity, careless carriers and shirking
+under-officers thought. Yet none could complain that he was unjust. He
+was simply straight-forward, and he had no sympathy with those who had
+not the same quality. He had carried a drunken Indian on his back for
+miles, and from a certain death by frost. He had, for want of a more
+convenient punishment, promptly knocked down Jeff Hyde, the sometime
+bully of the fort, for appropriating a bundle of furs belonging to a
+French half-breed, Gaspe Toujours. But he nursed Jeff Hyde through an
+attack of pneumonia, insisting at the same time that Gaspe Toujours
+should help him. The result of it all was that Jeff Hyde and Gaspe
+Toujours became constant allies. They both formulated their oaths by
+Jaspar Hume. The Indian, Cloud-in-the-Sky, though by word never thanking
+his rescuer, could not be induced to leave the fort, except on some
+mission with which Jaspar Hume was connected. He preferred living an
+undignified, un-Indian life, and earning food and shelter by coarsely
+labouring with his hands. He came at least twice a week to Hume’s
+log house, and, sitting down silent and cross-legged before the fire,
+watched the sub-factor working at his drawings and calculations. Sitting
+so for perhaps an hour or more, and smoking all the time, he would rise,
+and with a grunt, which was answered by a kindly nod, would pass out as
+silently as he came.
+
+And now as Jaspar Hume stood looking at his “Idea,” Cloud-in-the-Sky
+entered, let his blanket fall by the hearthstone and sat down upon it.
+If Hume saw him or heard him, he at least gave no sign at first. But he
+said at last in a low tone to the dog: “It is finished, Bouche; it is
+ready for the world.”
+
+Then he put it back, locked the box, and turned towards Cloud-in-the-Sky
+and the fireplace. The Indian grunted; the other nodded with the
+debating look again dominant in his eyes. The Indian met the look with
+satisfaction. There was something in Jaspar Hume’s habitual reticence
+and decisiveness in action which appealed more to Cloud-in-the-Sky than
+any freedom of speech could possibly have done.
+
+Hume sat down, handed the Indian a pipe and tobacco, and, with arms
+folded, watched the fire. For half an hour they sat so, white man,
+Indian, and dog. Then Hume rose, went to a cupboard, took out some
+sealing wax and matches, and in a moment melted wax was dropping upon
+the lock of the box containing his Idea. He had just finished this as
+Sergeant Gosse knocked at the door, and immediately afterwards entered
+the room.
+
+“Gosse,” said the sub-factor, “find Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late
+Carscallen, and bring them here.” Sergeant Gosse immediately
+departed upon this errand. Hume then turned to the Indian, and said
+“Cloud-in-the-Sky, I want you to go a long journey hereaway to the
+Barren Grounds. Have twelve dogs ready by nine to-morrow morning.”
+
+Cloud-in-the-Sky shook his head thoughtfully, and then after a pause
+said: “Strong-back go too?” Strongback was his name for the sub-factor.
+But the other either did not or would not hear. The Indian, however,
+appeared satisfied, for he smoked harder afterwards, and grunted to
+himself many times. A few moments passed, and then Sergeant Gosse
+entered, followed by Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late Carscallen.
+Late Carscallen had got his name “Late” from having been called “The
+Late Mr. Carscallen” by the chief factor because of his slowness. Slow
+as he was, however, the stout Scotsman had more than once proved himself
+a man of rare merit according to Hume’s ideas. He was, of course, the
+last to enter.
+
+The men grouped themselves about the fire, Late Carscallen getting the
+coldest corner. Each man drew his tobacco from his pocket, and, cutting
+it, waited for Hume to speak. His eyes were debating as they rested on
+the four. Then he took out Mrs. Lepage’s letter, and, with the group
+looking at him, he read it aloud. When it was finished, Cloud-in-the-Sky
+gave a guttural assent, and Gaspe Toujours, looking at Jeff Hyde, said:
+“It is cold in the Barren Grounds. We shall need much tabac.” These men
+could read without difficulty Hume’s reason for summoning them. To Gaspe
+Toujours’ remark Jeff Hyde nodded affirmatively, and then all looked
+at Late Carscallen. He opened his heavy jaws once or twice with an
+animal-like sound, and then he said, in a general kind of way:
+
+“To the Barren Grounds. But who leads?”
+
+Hume was writing on a slip of paper, and he did not reply. The faces of
+three of them showed just a shade of anxiety. They guessed who it would
+be, but they were not sure. Cloud-in-the-Sky, however, grunted at them,
+and raised the bowl of his pipe towards the subfactor. The anxiety then
+seemed to disappear.
+
+For ten minutes more they sat so, all silent. Then Hume rose, handed
+the slip of paper to Sergeant Gosse, and said: “Attend to that at once,
+Gosse. Examine the food and blankets closely.”
+
+The five were left alone.
+
+Then Hume spoke: “Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, Late Carscallen, and
+Cloud-in-the-Sky, this man, alive or dead, is between here and the
+Barren Grounds. He must be found--for his wife’s sake.”
+
+He handed Jeff Hyde her letter. Jeff rubbed his fingers before he
+touched the delicate and perfumed missive. Its delicacy seemed to
+bewilder him. He said: in a rough but kindly way: “Hope to die if
+I don’t,” and passed it on to Gaspe Toujours, who did not find it
+necessary to speak. His comrade had answered for him. Late Carscallen
+held it inquisitively for a moment, and then his jaws opened and shut as
+if he were about to speak. But before he did so Hume said: “It is a long
+journey and a hard one. Those who go may never come back. But this man
+was working for his country, and he has got a wife--a good wife.” He
+held up the letter. “Late Carscallen wants to know who will lead you.
+Can’t you trust me? I will give you a leader that you will follow to the
+Barren Grounds. To-morrow you will know who he is. Are you satisfied?
+Will you do it?”
+
+The four rose, and Cloud-in-the-Sky nodded approvingly many times. Hume
+held out his hand. Each man shook it, Jeff Hyde first. Then he said:
+“Close up ranks for the H.B.C.!” (H.B.C. meaning, of course, Hudson’s
+Bay Company.)
+
+With a good man to lead them, these four would have stormed, alone, the
+Heights of Balaklava.
+
+Once more Hume spoke. “Go to Gosse and get your outfits at nine
+to-morrow morning. Cloud-in-the-Sky, have your sleds at the store at
+eight o’clock, to be loaded. Then all meet me at 10.15 at the office of
+the chief factor. Good night.”
+
+As they passed out into the semi-arctic night, Late Carscallen with
+an unreal obstinacy said: “Slow march to the Barren Grounds--but who
+leads?”
+
+Left alone Hume sat down to the pine table at one end of the room and
+after a short hesitation began to write. For hours he sat there, rising
+only to put wood on the fire. The result was three letters: the largest
+addressed to a famous society in London, one to a solicitor in Montreal,
+and one to Mr. Field, the chief factor. They were all sealed carefully.
+Then he rose, took out his knife, and went over to the box as if to
+break the red seal. He paused, however, sighed, and put the knife back
+again. As he did so he felt something touch his leg. It was the dog.
+
+Hume drew in a sharp breath and said: “It was all ready, Bouche; and in
+another six months I should have been in London with it. But it will go
+whether I go or not--whether I go or not, Bouche.”
+
+The dog sprang up and put his head against his master’s breast.
+
+“Good dog, good dog, it’s all right, Bouche; however it goes, it’s all
+right,” said Hume.
+
+Then the dog lay down and watched his master until he drew the blankets
+to his chin, and sleep drew oblivion over a fighting soul.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+At ten o’clock next morning Jaspar Hume presented himself at the chief
+factor’s office. He bore with him the letters he had written the night
+before.
+
+The factor said: “Well, Hume, I am glad to see you. That woman’s letter
+was on my mind all night. Have you anything to propose? I suppose not,”
+ he added despairingly, as he looked closely into the face of the other.
+“Yes, Mr. Field, I propose that the expedition start at noon to-day.”
+
+“Start-at noon-to-day?”
+
+“In two hours.”
+
+“Who are the party?”
+
+“Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, Late Carscallen, and Cloud-in-the-Sky.”
+
+“Who leads them, Hume? Who leads?”
+
+“With your permission, I do.”
+
+“You? But, man, consider the danger and--your invention!”
+
+“I have considered all. Here are three letters. If we do not come back
+in three months, you will please send this one, with the box in my room,
+to the address on the envelope. This is for a solicitor in Montreal,
+which you will also forward as soon as possible; and this last one
+is for yourself; but you will not open it until the three months have
+passed. Have I your permission to lead these men? They would not go
+without me.”
+
+“I know that, I know that, Hume. I can’t say no. Go, and good luck go
+with you.”
+
+Here the manly old factor turned away his head. He knew that Hume had
+done right. He knew the possible sacrifice this man was making of all
+his hopes, of his very life; and his sound Scotch heart appreciated the
+act to the full. But he did not know all. He did not know that Jaspar
+Hume was starting to search for the man who had robbed him of youth and
+hope and genius and home.
+
+“Here is a letter that the wife has written to her husband on the chance
+of his getting it. You will take it with you, Hume. And the other she
+wrote to me--shall I keep it?” He held out his hand.
+
+“No, sir, I will keep it, if you will allow me. It is my commission, you
+know.” The shadow of a smile hovered about Hume’s lips.
+
+The factor smiled kindly as he replied: “Ah, yes, your
+commission--Captain Jaspar Hume of--of what?” Just then the door opened
+and there entered the four men who had sat before the sub-factor’s fire
+the night before. They were dressed in white blanket costumes from head
+to foot, white woollen capotes covering the grey fur caps they wore.
+Jaspar Hume ran his eye over them and then answered the factor’s
+question: “Of the White Guard, sir.”
+
+“Good,” was the reply. “Men, you are going on a relief expedition. There
+will be danger. You need a good leader. You have one in Captain Hume.”
+
+Jeff Hyde shook his head at the others with a pleased I-told-you-so
+expression; Cloud-in-the-Sky grunted his deep approval; and Late
+Carscallen smacked his lips in a satisfied manner and rubbed his leg
+with a schoolboy sense of enjoyment. The factor continued: “In the name
+of the Hudson’s Bay Company I will say that if you come back, having
+done your duty faithfully, you shall be well rewarded. And I believe you
+will come back, if it is in human power to do so.”
+
+Here Jeff Hyde said: “It isn’t for reward we’re doin’ it, Mr. Field, but
+because Mr. Hume wished it, because we believed he’d lead us; and for
+the lost fellow’s wife. We wouldn’t have said we’d do it, if it wasn’t
+for him that’s just called us the White Guard.”
+
+Under the bronze of the sub-factor’s face there spread a glow more
+red than brown, and he said simply: “Thank you, men”--for they had all
+nodded assent to Jeff Hyde’s words--“come with me to the store. We will
+start at noon.”
+
+At noon the White Guard stood in front of the store on which the British
+flag was hoisted with another beneath it bearing the magic letters,
+H.B.C.: magic, because they opened to the world regions that seemed
+destined never to know the touch of civilisation. The few inhabitants of
+the fort were gathered at the store; the dogs and loaded sleds were at
+the door. It wanted but two minutes to twelve when Hume came from his
+house, dressed also in the white blanket costume, and followed by his
+dog, Bouche. In a moment more he had placed Bouche at the head of the
+first team of dogs. They were to have their leader too. Punctually at
+noon, Hume shook hands with the factor, said a quick good-bye to the
+rest, called out a friendly “How!” to the Indians standing near, and
+to the sound of a hearty cheer, heartier perhaps because none had a
+confident hope that the five would come back, the march of the White
+Guard began.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+It was eighteen days after. In the shadow of a little island of pines,
+that lies in a shivering waste of ice and snow, the White Guard were
+camped. They were able to do this night what they had not done for
+days--dig a great grave of snow, and building a fire of pine wood
+at each end of this strange house, get protection and something like
+comfort. They sat silent close to the fires. Jaspar Hume was writing
+with numbed fingers. The extract that follows is taken from his diary.
+It tells that day’s life, and so gives an idea of harder, sterner days
+that they had spent and must yet spend, on this weary journey.
+
+   December 25th.--This is Christmas Day and Camp twenty-seven. We
+   have marched only five miles to-day. We are eighty miles from Great
+   Fish River, and the worst yet to do. We have discovered no signs.
+   Jeff Hyde has had a bad two days with his frozen foot. Gaspe
+   Toujours helps him nobly. One of the dogs died this morning.
+   Bouche is a great leader. This night’s shelter is a god-send.
+   Cloud-in-the-Sky has a plan whereby some of us will sleep well. We
+   are in latitude 63deg 47’ and longitude 112deg 32’ 14”. Have worked
+   out lunar observations. Have marked a tree JH/27 and raised cairn
+   No. 3.
+
+   We are able to celebrate Christmas Day with a good basin of tea and
+   our stand-by of beans cooked in fat. I was right about them: they
+   have great sustaining power. To-morrow we will start at ten
+   o’clock.
+
+The writing done, Jaspar Hume put his book away and turned towards the
+rest. Cloud-in-the-Sky and Late Carscallen were smoking. Little could be
+seen of their faces; they were snuffled to the eyes. Gaspe Toujours was
+drinking a basin of tea, and Jeff Hyde was fitfully dozing by the fire.
+The dogs were above in the tent--all but Bouche, who was permitted to be
+near his master. Presently the sub-factor rose, took from a knapsack a
+small tin pail, and put it near the fire. Then he took five little cups
+that fitted snugly into each other, separated them, and put them also
+near the fire. None of the party spoke. A change seemed to pass over the
+faces of all except Cloud-in-the-Sky. He smoked on unmoved. At length
+Hume spoke cheerily: “Now, men, before we turn in we’ll do something in
+honour of the day. Liquor we none of us have touched since we started;
+but back there in the fort, and maybe in other places too, they will
+be thinking of us; so we’ll drink a health to them, though it’s but a
+spoonful, and to the day when we see them again!”
+
+The cups were passed round. The sub-factor measured out a very small
+portion to each. They were not men of uncommon sentiment; their lives
+were rigid and isolated and severe. Fireside comforts under fortunate
+conditions they saw but seldom, and they were not given to
+expressing their feelings demonstratively. But each man then, save
+Cloud-in-the-Sky, had some memory worth a resurrection.
+
+Jaspar Hume raised his cup; the rest followed his example. “To absent
+friends and the day when we see them again!” he said; and they all
+drank. Gaspe Toujours drank solemnly, and, as though no one was near,
+made the sign of the cross; for his memory was with a dark-eyed,
+soft-cheeked habitant girl of the parish of Saint Gabrielle, whom he had
+left behind seven years before, and had never seen since. Word had come
+from the parish priest that she was dying, and though he wrote back in
+his homely patois of his grief, and begged that the good father would
+write again, no word had ever come. He thought of her now as one for
+whom the candles had been lighted and masses had been said.
+
+But Jeff Hyde’s eyes were bright, and suffering as he was, the heart in
+him was brave and hopeful. He was thinking of a glorious Christmas Day
+upon the Madawaska River three years agone; of Adam Henry, the blind
+fiddler; of bright, warm-hearted Pattie Chown, the belle of the ball,
+and the long drive home in the frosty night.
+
+Late Carscallen was thinking of a brother whom he had heard preach his
+first sermon in Edinburgh twenty years before. And Late Carscallen, slow
+of speech and thought, had been full of pride and love of that brilliant
+brother. In the natural course of things, they had drifted apart, the
+slow and uncouth one to make his home at last in the Far North, and to
+be this night on his way to the Barren Grounds. But as he stood with the
+cup to his lips he recalled the words of a newspaper paragraph of a
+few months before. It stated that “the Reverend James Carscallen,
+D.D., preached before Her Majesty on Whitsunday, and had the honour of
+lunching with Her Majesty afterwards.” Remembering that, Late Carscallen
+rubbed his left hand joyfully against his blanketed leg and drank.
+
+Cloud-in-the-Sky’s thoughts were with the present, and his “Ugh!” of
+approval was one of the senses purely. Instead of drinking to absent
+friends he looked at the sub-factor and said: “How!” He drank to the
+subfactor.
+
+Jaspar Hume had a memory of childhood; of a house beside a swift-flowing
+river, where a gentle widowed mother braced her heart against misfortune
+and denied herself and slaved that her son might be educated. He had
+said to her that some day he would be a great man, and she would be paid
+back a hundredfold. And he had worked hard at school, very hard. But one
+cold day of spring a message came to the school, and he sped homewards
+to the house beside the dark river down which the ice was floating,--he
+would remember that floating ice to his last day, and entered a quiet
+room where a white-faced woman was breathing away her life. And he fell
+at her side and kissed her hand and called to her; and she waked for a
+moment only and smiled on him, and said: “Be good, my boy, and God
+will make you great.” Then she said she was cold, and some one felt
+her feet--a kind old soul who shook her head sadly at him; and a voice,
+rising out of a strange smiling languor, murmured: “I’ll away, I’ll away
+to the Promised Land--to the Promised Land.... It is cold--so cold--God
+keep my boy!” Then the voice ceased, and the kind old soul who had
+looked at him, pityingly folded her arms about him, and drawing his
+brown head to her breast, kissed him with flowing eyes and whispered:
+“Come away, laddie, come away.”
+
+But he came back in the night and sat beside her, and remained there
+till the sun grew bright, and then through another day and night,
+until they bore her out of the little house by the river to the frozen
+hill-side.
+
+Sitting here in this winter desolation Jaspar Hume once more beheld
+these scenes of twenty years before and followed himself, a poor
+dispensing clerk in a doctor’s office, working for that dream of
+achievement in which his mother believed; for which she hoped. And
+following further the boy that was himself, he saw a friendless
+first-year man at college, soon, however, to make a friend of Clive
+Lepage, and to see always the best of that friend, being himself so
+true. At last the day came when they both graduated together in science,
+a bright and happy day, succeeded by one still brighter, when they both
+entered a great firm as junior partners. Afterwards befell the meeting
+with Rose Varcoe; and he thought of how he praised his friend Lepage
+to her, and brought him to be introduced to her. He recalled all those
+visions that came to him when, his professional triumphs achieved, he
+should have a happy home, and happy faces by his fireside. And the face
+was to be that of Rose Varcoe, and the others, faces of those who should
+be like her and like himself. He saw, or rather felt, that face clouded
+and anxious when he went away ill and blind for health’s sake. He did
+not write to her. The doctors forbade him that. He did not ask her to
+write, for his was so steadfast a nature that he did not need letters
+to keep him true; and he thought she must be the same. He did not
+understand a woman’s heart, how it needs remembrances, and needs to give
+remembrances.
+
+Hume’s face in the light of this fire seemed calm and cold, yet behind
+it was an agony of memory--the memory of the day when he discovered that
+Lepage was married to Rose, and that the trusted friend had grown famous
+and well-to-do on the offspring of his brain. His first thought had been
+one of fierce determination to expose this man who had falsified all
+trust. But then came the thought of the girl, and, most of all, there
+came the words of his dying mother, “Be good, my boy, and God will make
+you great”; and for his mother’s sake he had compassion on the girl, and
+sought no restitution from her husband. And now, ten years later, he
+did not regret that he had stayed his hand. The world had ceased to call
+Lepage a genius. He had not fulfilled the hope once held of him. Hume
+knew this from occasional references in scientific journals.
+
+And now he was making this journey to save, if he could, Lepage’s life.
+Though just on the verge of a new era in his career--to give to the
+world the fruit of ten years’ thought and labour, he had set all behind
+him, that he might be true to the friendship of his youth, that he might
+be clear of the strokes of conscience to the last hour of his life.
+
+Looking round him now, the debating look came again into his eyes. He
+placed his hand in his breast, and let it rest there for a moment. The
+look became certain and steady, the hand was drawn out, and in it was a
+Book of Common Prayer. Upon the fly-leaf was written: “Jane Hume, to her
+dear son Jaspar, on his twelfth birthday.”
+
+These men of the White Guard were not used to religious practices,
+whatever their past had been in that regard, and at any other time they
+might have been surprised at this action of their leader. Under some
+circumstances it might have lessened their opinion of him; but his
+influence over them now was complete. They knew they were getting nearer
+to him than they had ever done; even Cloud-in-the-Sky appreciated that.
+Hume spoke no word to them, but looked at them and stood up. They all
+did the same, Jeff Hyde leaning on the shoulders of Gaspe Toujours. He
+read first, four verses of the Thirty-first Psalm, then followed the
+prayer of St. Chrysostom, and the beautiful collect which appeals to the
+Almighty to mercifully look upon the infirmities of men, and to stretch
+forth His hand to keep and defend them in all dangers and necessities.
+Late Carscallen, after a long pause, said “Amen,” and Jeff said in a
+whisper to Gaspe Toujours: “That’s to the point. Infirmities and dangers
+and necessities is what troubles us.”
+
+Immediately after, at a sign from the sub-factor, Cloud-in-the-Sky began
+to transfer the burning wood from one fire to the other until only hot
+ashes were left where a great blaze had been. Over these ashes pine
+twigs and branches were spread, and over them again blankets. The word
+was then given to turn in, and Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late
+Carscallen lay down in this comfortable bed. Each wished to give way to
+their captain, but he would not consent. He and Cloud-in-the-Sky wrapped
+themselves in their blankets like mummies, covering the head completely,
+and under the arctic sky they slept alone in an austere and tenantless
+world. They never know how loftily sardonic Nature can be who have not
+seen that land where the mercury freezes in the tubes, and there is
+light but no warmth in the smile of the sun. Not Sturt in the heart
+of Australia with the mercury bursting the fevered tubes, with the
+finger-nails breaking like brittle glass, with the ink drying instantly
+on the pen, with the hair fading and falling off, would, if he could,
+have exchanged his lot for that of the White Guard. They were in a
+frozen endlessness that stretched away to a world where never voice of
+man or clip of wing or tread of animal is heard. It is the threshold to
+the undiscovered country, to that untouched north whose fields of white
+are only furrowed by the giant forces of the elements; on whose frigid
+hearthstone no fire is ever lit; where the electric phantoms of a
+nightless land pass and repass, and are never still; where the magic
+needle points not towards the north but darkly downward; where the sun
+never stretches warm hands to him who dares confront the terrors of
+eternal snow.
+
+The White Guard slept.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+“No, Captain; leave me here and push on to Manitou Mountain. You ought
+to make it in two days. I’m just as safe here as on the sleds, and less
+trouble. A blind man’s no good. I’ll have a good rest while you’re gone,
+and then perhaps my eyes will come out right. My foot’s nearly well
+now.”
+
+Jeff Hyde was snow-blind. The giant of the party had suffered most.
+
+But Hume said in reply: “I won’t leave you alone. The dogs can carry you
+as they’ve done for the last ten days.”
+
+But Jeff replied: “I’m as safe here as marching, and safer. When the
+dogs are not carrying me, nor any one leading me, you can get on faster;
+and that means everything to us, now don’t it?”
+
+Hume met the eyes of Gaspe Toujours. He read them. Then he said to Jeff:
+“It shall be as you wish. Late Carscallen, Cloud-in-the-Sky, and myself
+will push on to Manitou Mountain. You and Gaspe Toujours will remain
+here.”
+
+Jeff Hyde’s blind eyes turned towards Gaspe Toujours, who said: “Yes. We
+have plenty tabac.”
+
+A tent was set up, provisions were put in it, a spirit-lamp and matches
+were added, and the simple menage was complete. Not quite. Jaspar Hume
+looked round. There was not a tree in sight. He stooped and cut away a
+pole that was used for strengthening the runners of the sleds, fastened
+it firmly in the ground, and tied to it a red woollen scarf, used for
+tightening his white blankets round him. Then he said: “Be sure and keep
+that flying.”
+
+Jeff’s face was turned towards the north. The blindman’s instinct
+was coming to him. Far off white eddying drifts were rising over long
+hillocks of snow. When he turned round again his face was troubled. It
+grew more troubled, then it brightened up again, and he said to Hume:
+“Captain, would you leave that book with me till you come back--that
+about infirmities, dangers, and necessities? I knew a river-boss who
+used to carry an old spelling-book round with him for luck. It seems to
+me as if that book of yours, Captain, would bring luck to this part of
+the White Guard, that bein’ out at heels like has to stay behind.”
+
+Hume had borne the sufferings of his life with courage; he had led this
+terrible tramp with no tremor at his heart for himself; he was seeking
+to perform a perilous act without any inward shrinking; but Jeff’s
+request was the greatest trial of this critical period in his life.
+
+Jeff felt, if he could not see, the hesitation of his chief. His rough
+but kind instincts told him something was wrong, and he hastened to add:
+“Beg your pardon, Mr. Hume, it ain’t no matter. I oughtn’t have asked
+you for it. But it’s just like me. I’ve been a chain on the leg of the
+White Guard this whole tramp.”
+
+The moment of hesitation had passed before Jeff had said half-a-dozen
+words, and Hume put the book in his hands with the words: “No, Jeff,
+take it. It will bring luck to the White Guard. Keep it safe until I
+come back.”
+
+Jeff took the book, but hearing a guttural “Ugh” behind him, he turned
+round defiantly. Cloud-in-the-Sky touched his arm and said: “Good!
+Strong-back book--good!” Jeff was satisfied.
+
+At this point they parted, Jeff and Gaspe Toujours remaining, and Hume
+and his two followers going on towards Manitou Mountain. There seemed
+little probability that Clive Lepage would be found. In their progress
+eastward and northward they had covered wide areas of country, dividing
+and meeting again after stated hours of travel, but not a sign had been
+seen; neither cairn nor staff nor any mark of human presence.
+
+Hume had noticed Jeff Hyde’s face when it was turned to the eddying
+drifts of the north, and he understood what was in the experienced
+huntsman’s mind. He knew that severe weather was before them, and that
+the greatest danger of the journey was to be encountered.
+
+That night they saw Manitou Mountain, cold, colossal, harshly calm; and
+jointly with that sight there arose a shrieking, biting, fearful
+north wind. It blew upon them in cruel menace of conquest, in piercing
+inclemency. It struck a freezing terror to their hearts, and grew in
+violent attack until, as if repenting that it had foregone its power to
+save, the sun suddenly grew red and angry, and spread out a shield of
+blood along the bastions of the west. The wind shrank back and grew less
+murderous, and ere the last red arrow shot up behind the lonely western
+wall of white, the three knew that the worst of the storm had passed and
+that death had drawn back for a time. What Hume thought may be gathered
+from his diary; for ere he crawled in among the dogs and stretched
+himself out beside Bouche, he wrote these words with aching fingers:
+
+   January 10th: Camp 39.--A bitter day. We are facing three fears
+   now: the fate of those we left behind; Lepage’s fate; and the going
+   back. We are twenty miles from Manitou Mountain. If he is found,
+   I should not fear the return journey; success gives hope. But we
+   trust in God.
+
+Another day passed and at night, after a hard march, they camped five
+miles from Manitou Mountain. And not a sign! But Hume felt there was a
+faint chance of Lepage being found at this mountain. His iron frame had
+borne the hardships of this journey well; his strong heart better. But
+this night an unaccountable weakness possessed him. Mind and body were
+on the verge of helplessness. Bouche seemed to understand this, and when
+he was unhitched from the team of dogs, now dwindled to seven, he leaped
+upon his master’s breast. It was as if some instinct of sympathy, of
+prescience, was passing between the man and the dog. Hume bent his head
+down to Bouche for an instant and rubbed his side kindly; then he said,
+with a tired accent: “It’s all right, old dog, it’s all right.”
+
+Hume did not sleep well at first, but at length oblivion came. He waked
+to feel Bouche tugging at his blankets. It was noon. Late Carscallen and
+Cloud-in-the-Sky were still sleeping--inanimate bundles among the dogs.
+In an hour they were on their way again, and towards sunset they had
+reached the foot of Manitou Mountain. Abruptly from the plain rose this
+mighty mound, blue and white upon a black base. A few straggling pines
+grew near its foot, defying latitude, as the mountain itself defied
+the calculations of geographers and geologists. A halt was called.
+Late Carscallen and Cloud-in-the-Sky looked at the chief. His eyes were
+scanning the mountain closely. Suddenly he motioned. A hundred feet up
+there was a great round hole in the solid rock, and from this hole there
+came a feeble cloud of smoke! The other two saw also. Cloud-in-the-Sky
+gave a wild whoop, and from the mountain there came, a moment after, a
+faint replica of the sound. It was not an echo, for there appeared at
+the mouth of the cave an Indian, who made feeble signs for them to
+come. In a little while they were at the cave. As Jaspar Hume entered,
+Cloud-in-the-Sky and the stalwart but emaciated Indian who had beckoned
+to them spoke to each other in the Chinook language, the jargon common
+to all Indians of the West.
+
+Jaspar Hume saw a form reclining on a great bundle of pine branches,
+and he knew what Rose Lepage had prayed for was come to pass. By the
+flickering light of a handful of fire he saw Lepage--rather what was
+left of him--a shadow of energy, a heap of nerveless bones. His eyes
+were shut, but as Hume, with a quiver of memory and sympathy at his
+heart, stood for an instant, and looked at the man whom he had cherished
+as a friend and found an enemy, Lepage’s lips moved and a weak voice
+said: “Who is there?”
+
+“A friend.”
+
+“Come-near-me,--friend.”
+
+Hume made a motion to Late Carscallen, who was heating some liquor at
+the fire, and then he stooped and lifted up the sick man’s head, and
+took his hand. “You have come--to save me!” whispered the weak voice
+again.
+
+“Yes; I’ve come to save you.” This voice was strong and clear and true.
+
+“I seem--to have--heard--your voice before--somewhere before--I seem
+to--have--”
+
+But he had fainted.
+
+Hume poured a little liquor down the sick man’s throat, and Late
+Carscallen chafed the delicate hand--delicate in health, it was like
+that of a little child now. When breath came again Hume whispered to his
+helper “Take Cloud-in-the-Sky and get wood; bring fresh branches. Then
+clear one of the sleds, and we will start back with him in the early
+morning.”
+
+Late Carscallen, looking at the skeleton-like figure, said: “He will
+never get there.”
+
+“Yes, he will get there,” was Hume’s reply.
+
+“But he is dying.”
+
+“He goes with me to Fort Providence.”
+
+“Ay, to Providence he goes, but not with you,” said Late Carscallen,
+doggedly.
+
+Anger flashed in Hume’s eye, but he said quietly “Get the wood,
+Carscallen.”
+
+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.”
+
+“To take me--to her.” Lepage shook his head sadly, but he pressed to his
+lips the letter that Hume had given him.
+
+“To take you to her, Lepage.”
+
+“No, I shall never see her again.”
+
+“I tell you, you shall. You can live if you will. You owe that to
+her--to me--to God.”
+
+“To her--to you--to God. I have been true to none. I have been punished.
+I shall die here.”
+
+“You shall go to Fort Providence. Do that in payment of your debt to me,
+Lepage. I demand that.” In this transgressor there was a latent spark
+of honour, a sense of justice that might have been developed to great
+causes, if some strong nature, seeing his weaknesses, had not condoned
+them, but had appealed to the natural chivalry of an impressionable,
+vain, and weak character. He struggled to meet Hume’s eyes, and doing
+so, he gained confidence and said: “I will try to live. I will do you
+justice--yet.”
+
+“Your first duty is to eat and drink. We start for Fort Providence
+to-morrow.”
+
+The sick man stretched out his hand. “Food! Food!” he said.
+
+In tiny portions food and drink were given to him, and his strength
+sensibly increased. The cave was soon aglow with the fire kindled by
+Late Carscallen and Cloud-in-the-Sky. There was little speaking, for
+the sick man soon fell asleep. Lepage’s Indian told Cloud-in-the-Sky
+the tale of their march--how the other Indian and the dogs died; how
+his master became ill as they were starting towards Fort Providence from
+Manitou Mountain in the summer weather; how they turned back and took
+refuge in this cave; how month by month they had lived on what would
+hardly keep a rabbit alive; and how, at last, his master urged him to
+press on with his papers; but he would not, and stayed until this day,
+when the last bit of food had been eaten, and they were found.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The next morning Lepage was placed upon a sled, and they started back,
+Bouche barking joyfully as he led off, with Cloud-in-the-Sky beside him.
+There was light in the faces of all, though the light could not be seen
+by reason of their being muffled so. All day they travelled, scarcely
+halting, Lepage’s Indian marching well. Often the corpse-like bundle on
+the sled was disturbed, and biscuits wet in brandy and bits of preserved
+venison were given.
+
+That night Hume said to Late Carscallen: “I am going to start at the
+first light of the morning to get to Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde as
+soon as possible. Follow as fast as you can. He will be safe, if you
+give him food and drink often. I shall get to the place where we left
+them about noon; you should reach there at night or early the next
+morning.”
+
+“Hadn’t you better take Bouche with you?” said Late Carscallen.
+
+The sub-factor thought a moment, and then said: “No, he is needed most
+where he is.”
+
+At noon the next day Jaspar Hume looked round upon a billowy plain of
+sun and ice, but saw no staff, no signal, no tent, no sign of human
+life: of Gaspe Toujours or of Jeff Hyde. His strong heart quailed. Had
+he lost his way? He looked at the sun. He was not sure. He consulted his
+compass, but it quivered hesitatingly. For awhile that wild bewilderment
+which seizes upon the minds of the strongest, when lost, mastered
+him, in spite of his struggles against it. He moved in a maze of
+half-blindness, half-delirium. He was lost in it, swayed by it. He began
+to wander about; and there grew upon his senses strange delights and
+reeling agonies. He heard church bells, he caught at butterflies, he
+tumbled in new-mown hay, he wandered in a tropic garden. But in the hay
+a wasp stung him, and the butterfly changed to a curling black snake
+that struck at him and glided to a dark-flowing river full of floating
+ice, and up from the river a white hand was thrust, and it beckoned
+him--beckoned him. He shut his eyes and moved towards it, but a voice
+stopped him, and it said, “Come away, come away,” and two arms folded
+him round, and as he went back from the shore he stumbled and fell,
+and... What is this? A yielding mass at his feet--a mass that stirs! He
+clutches at it, he tears away the snow, he calls aloud--and his voice
+has a faraway unnatural sound--“Gaspe Toujours! Gaspe Toujours!” Then
+the figure of a man shakes itself in the snow, and a voice says: “Ay,
+ay, sir!” Yes, it is Gaspe Toujours! And beside him lies Jeff Hyde, and
+alive. “Ay, ay, sir, alive!”
+
+Jaspar Hume’s mind was itself again. It had but suffered for a moment
+the agony of delirium.
+
+Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde had lain down in the tent the night of
+the great wind, and had gone to sleep at once. The staff had been blown
+down, the tent had fallen over them, the drift had covered them, and for
+three days they had slept beneath the snow, never waking.
+
+Jeff Hyde’s sight was come again to him. “You’ve come back for the
+book,” he said. “You couldn’t go on without it. You ought to have taken
+it yesterday.”
+
+He drew it from his pocket. He was dazed.
+
+“No, Jeff, I’ve not come back for that, and I did not leave you
+yesterday: it is three days and more since we parted. The book has
+brought us luck, and the best. We have found our man; and they’ll be
+here to-night with him. I came on ahead to see how you fared.”
+
+In that frost-bitten world Jeff Hyde uncovered his head for a moment.
+“Gaspe Toujours is a papist,” he said, “but he read me some of that book
+the day you left, and one thing we went to sleep on: it was that about
+‘Lightenin’ the darkness, and defendin’ us from all the perils and
+dangers of this night.’” Here Gaspe Toujours made the sign of the cross.
+Jeff Hyde continued half apologetically for his comrade: “That comes
+natural to Gaspe Toujours--I guess it always does to papists. But I
+never had any trainin’ that way, and I had to turn the thing over and
+over, and I fell asleep on it. And when I wake up three days after,
+here’s my eyes as fresh as daisies, and you back, sir, and the thing
+done that we come to do.”
+
+He put the Book into Hume’s hands and at that moment Gaspe Toujours
+said: “See!” Far off, against the eastern horizon, appeared a group of
+moving figures.
+
+That night the broken segments of the White Guard were reunited, and
+Clive Lepage slept by the side of Jaspar Hume.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Napoleon might have marched back from Moscow with undecimated legions
+safely enough, if the heart of those legions had not been crushed. The
+White Guard, with their faces turned homeward, and the man they had
+sought for in their care, seemed to have acquired new strength. Through
+days of dreadful cold, through nights of appalling fierceness, through
+storm upon the plains that made for them paralysing coverlets, they
+marched. And if Lepage did not grow stronger, life at least was kept in
+him.
+
+There was little speech among them, but once in a while Gaspe Toujours
+sang snatches of the songs of the voyageurs of the great rivers; and
+the hearts of all were strong. Between Bouche and his master there was
+occasional demonstration. On the twentieth day homeward, Hume said with
+his hand on the dog’s head “It had to be done, Bouche; even a dog could
+see that.”
+
+And so it was “all right” for the White Guard. One day when the sun was
+warmer than usual over Fort Providence, and just sixty-five days since
+that cheer had gone up from apprehensive hearts for brave men going out
+into the Barren Grounds, Sergeant Gosse, who, every day, and of late
+many times a day, had swept the north-east with a field-glass, rushed
+into the chief-factor’s office, and with a broken voice cried: “They’ve
+all come! They’ve come!” Then he leaned his arm and head against the
+wall and sobbed. And the old factor rose from his chair tremblingly, and
+said his thank-god, and went hurriedly into the square. He did not go
+steadily, however, the joyous news had shaken him, sturdy old pioneer
+as he was. A fringe of white had grown about his temples in the last
+two months. The people of the fort had said they had never seen him so
+irascible, yet so gentle; so uneasy, yet so reserved; so stern about the
+mouth, yet so kind about the eyes as he had been since Hume had gone on
+this desperate errand.
+
+Already the handful of people at the fort had gathered. Indians left
+the store, and joined the rest; the factor and Sergeant Gosse set out
+to meet the little army of relief. To the factor’s “In the name of the
+Hudson’s Bay Company, Mr. Hume,” when they met there came “By the help
+of God, sir,” and he pointed to the sled whereon Lepage lay. A feeble
+hand was clasped in the burly hand of the factor, and then they all fell
+into line again, Cloud-in-the-Sky running ahead of the dogs. Snow had
+fallen on them, and as they entered the stockade, men and dogs were
+white from head to foot.
+
+The White Guard had come back. Jaspar Hume as simply acknowledged his
+strident welcome as he had done the God-speed two months and more ago.
+With the factor he bore the sick man in, and laid him on his own bed.
+Then he came outside again, and when they cheered him once more, he
+said: “We have come safe through, and I’m thankful. But remember that my
+comrades in this march deserve your cheers more than I. Without them I
+couldn’t have done anything.”
+
+“In our infirmities and in all our dangers and necessities,” added Jeff
+Hyde. “The luck of the world was in that book!”
+
+In another half-hour the White Guard was at ease, and four of them were
+gathered about the great stove in the store, Cloud-in-the-Sky smoking
+placidly, and full of guttural emphasis; Late Carscallen moving his
+animal-like jaws with a sense of satisfaction; Gaspe Toujours talking
+in Chinook to the Indians, in patois to the French clerk, and in broken
+English to them all; and Jeff Hyde exclaiming on the wonders of the
+march, the finding of Lepage at Manitou Mountain, and of himself and
+Gaspe Toujours buried in the snow.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+In Hume’s house at midnight Lepage lay asleep with his wife’s
+letters--received through the factor--in his hand. The firelight played
+upon a dark, disappointed face--a doomed, prematurely old face, as it
+seemed to the factor.
+
+“You knew him, then,” the factor said, after a long silence, with a
+gesture towards the bed.
+
+“Yes, well, years ago,” replied Hume.
+
+Just then the sick man stirred in his sleep, and he said disjointedly:
+“I’ll make it all right to you, Hume.” Then came a pause, and a quicker
+utterance: “Forgive--forgive me, Rose.” The factor got up, and turned to
+go, and Hume, with a sorrowful gesture, went over to the bed.
+
+Again the voice said: “Ten years--I have repented ten years--I dare not
+speak--”
+
+The factor touched Hume’s arm. “He has fever. You and I must nurse him,
+Hume. You can trust me--you understand.”
+
+“Yes, I can trust you,” was the reply. “But I can tell you nothing.”
+
+“I do not want to know anything. If you can watch till two o’clock I
+will relieve you. I’ll send the medicine chest over. You know how to
+treat him.”
+
+The factor passed out, and the other was left alone with the man who had
+wronged him. The feeling most active in his mind was pity, and, as he
+prepared a draught from his own stock of medicines, he thought the past
+and the present all over. He knew that however much he had suffered,
+this man had suffered more. In this silent night there was broken
+down any barrier that may have stood between Lepage and his complete
+compassion. Having effaced himself from the calculation, justice became
+forgiveness.
+
+He moistened the sick man’s lips, and bathed his forehead, and roused
+him once to take a quieting powder. Then he sat down and wrote to
+Rose Lepage. But he tore the letter up again and said to the dog: “No,
+Bouche, I can’t; the factor must do it. She needn’t know yet that it was
+I who saved him. It doesn’t make any burden of gratitude, if my name is
+kept out of it. The factor mustn’t mention me, Bouche--not yet. When he
+is well we will go to London with It, Bouche, and we needn’t meet her.
+It will be all right, Bouche, all right!”
+
+The dog seemed to understand; for he went over to the box that held
+It; and looked at his master. Then Jaspar Hume rose, broke the seal,
+unlocked the box and opened it; but he heard the sick man moan, and he
+closed it again and went over to the bed. The feeble voice said: “I must
+speak--I cannot die so--not so.” Hume moistened the lips once, put a
+cold cloth on the fevered head, and then sat down by the fire again.
+
+Lepage slept at last. The restless hands grew quiet, the breath became
+more regular, the tortured mind found a short peace. With the old
+debating look in his eyes, Hume sat there watching until the factor
+relieved him.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+February and March and April were past, and May was come. Lepage had
+had a hard struggle for life, but he had survived. For weeks every night
+there was a repetition of that first night after the return: delirious
+self-condemnation, entreaty, appeal to his wife, and Hume’s name
+mentioned in shuddering remorse. With the help of the Indian who had
+shared the sick man’s sufferings in the Barren Grounds, the factor and
+Hume nursed him back to life. After the first night no word had passed
+between the two watchers regarding the substance of Lepage’s delirium.
+But one evening the factor was watching alone, and the repentant man
+from his feverish sleep cried out: “Hush, hush! don’t let them know--I
+stole them both, and Rose did not know. Rose did not know!”
+
+The factor rose and walked away. The dog was watching him. He said to
+Bouche: “You have a good master, Bouche.”
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+In an arm-chair made of hickory and birch-bark by Cloud-in-the-Sky,
+Lepage sat reading a letter from his wife. She was at Winnipeg, and was
+coming west as far as Regina to meet him on his way down. He looked a
+wreck; but a handsome wreck. His refined features, his soft black beard
+and blue eyes, his graceful hand and gentle manners, seemed not to
+belong to an evil-hearted man. He sat in the sunlight at the door,
+wrapped about in moose and beaver skins. The world of plain and wood
+was glad. Not so Lepage. He sat and thought of what was to come. He had
+hoped at times that he would die, but twice Hume had said: “I demand
+your life. You owe it to your wife--to me.” He had pulled his heart up
+to this demand and had lived. But what lay before him? He saw a stony
+track, and he shuddered.
+
+As he sat there facing the future, Hume came to him and said: “If you
+feel up to it, Lepage, we will start for Edmonton on Monday. I think it
+will be quite safe, and your wife is anxious. I shall accompany you as
+far as Edmonton; you can then proceed by easy stages, in this pleasant
+weather. Are you ready to go?”
+
+“Quite ready,” was the reply.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+On a beautiful May evening Lepage, Hume, and the White Guard were
+welcomed at Fort Edmonton by the officer in command of the Mounted
+Police. They were to enjoy the hospitality of the fort for a couple of
+days. Hume was to go back with Cloud-in-the-Sky and Late Carscallen,
+and a number of Indian carriers; for this was a journey of business too.
+Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde were to press on with Lepage, who was now
+much stronger and better. One day passed, and on the following morning
+Hume gave instructions to Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde, and made
+preparations for his going back. He was standing in the Barracks Square,
+when a horseman rode in and made inquiry of a sergeant standing near,
+if Lepage had arrived at the fort. A few words brought out the fact that
+Rose Lepage was nearing the fort from the south. The trooper had been
+sent on ahead the day before, but his horse having met with a slight
+accident, he had been delayed. He had seen the party, however, a long
+distance back in the early morning. He must now ride away and meet
+Mrs. Lepage, he said. He was furnished with a fresh horse, and he left,
+bearing a message from Lepage.
+
+Hume decided to leave Fort Edmonton at once, and to take all the White
+Guard back with him; and gave orders to that effect. Entering the
+room where Lepage sat alone, he said: “Lepage, the time has come for
+good-bye. I am starting for Fort Providence.”
+
+But the other replied: “You will wait until my wife comes. You must.”
+ There was trouble in his voice. “I must not.”
+
+Lepage braced himself for a heavy task and said: “Hume, if the time has
+come to say good-bye, it has also come when we should speak together for
+once openly: to settle, in so far as can be done, a long account. You
+have not let my wife know who saved me. That appears from her letters.
+She asks the name of my rescuer. I have not yet told her. But she will
+know that to-day when I tell her all.”
+
+“When you tell her all?”
+
+“When I tell her all.”
+
+“But you shall not do that.”
+
+“I will. It will be the beginning of the confession which I shall
+afterwards make to the world.”
+
+“By Heaven you shall not do it. Do you want to wreck her life?”
+
+Jaspar Hume’s face was wrathful, and remained so till the other sank
+back in the chair with his forehead in his hands; but it softened as he
+saw this remorse and shame. He began to see that Lepage had not clearly
+grasped the whole situation. He said in quieter but still firm tones:
+“No, Lepage, that matter is between us two, and us alone. She must never
+know--the world therefore must never know. You did an unmanly thing;
+you are suffering a manly remorse. Now let it end here--but I swear it
+shall,” he said in sharp tones, as the other shook his head negatively:
+“I would have let you die at Manitou Mountain, if I had thought you
+would dare to take away your wife’s peace--your children’s respect.”
+
+“I have no children; our baby died.”
+
+Hume softened again. “Can you not see, Lepage? The thing cannot be
+mended. I bury it all, and so must you. You will begin the world again,
+and so shall I. Keep your wife’s love. Henceforth you will deserve it.”
+
+Lepage raised moist eyes to the other and said: “But you will take back
+the money I got for that?”
+
+There was a pause, then Hume replied: “Yes, upon such terms, times,
+and conditions as I shall hereafter fix. You have no child, Lepage?” he
+gently added.
+
+“We have no child; it died with my fame.”
+
+Hume looked steadily into the eyes of the man who had wronged him.
+“Remember, Lepage, you begin the world again. I am going now. By the
+memory of old days, good-bye.” He held out his hand. Lepage took it,
+rose tremblingly to his feet, and said, “You are a good man, Hume.
+Good-bye.”
+
+The sub-factor turned at the door. “If it will please you, tell
+your wife that I saved you. Some one will tell her; perhaps I would
+rather--at least it would be more natural, if you did it.”
+
+He passed out into the sunshine that streamed into the room and fell
+across the figure of Lepage, who murmured dreamily: “And begin the world
+again.”
+
+Time passed. A shadow fell across the sunlight that streamed upon
+Lepage. He looked up. There was a startled cry of joy, an answering
+exclamation of love, and Rose was clasped in her husband’s arms.
+
+A few moments afterwards the sweet-faced woman said: “Who was that man
+who rode away to the north as I came up, Clive? He reminded me of some
+one.”
+
+“That was the leader of the White Guard, the man who saved me, Rose.” He
+paused a moment and then solemnly said: “It was Jaspar Hume.”
+
+The wife came to her feet with a spring. “He saved you--Jaspar Hume! Oh,
+Clive!”
+
+“He saved me, Rose.”
+
+Her eyes were wet: “And he would not stay and let me thank him! Poor
+fellow, poor Jaspar Hume! Has he been up here all these years?”
+
+Her face was flushed, and pain was struggling with the joy she felt in
+seeing her husband again.
+
+“Yes, he has been here all the time.”
+
+“Then he has not succeeded in life, Clive!” Her thoughts went back to
+the days when, blind and ill, Hume went away for health’s sake, and she
+remembered how sorry then she felt for him, and how grieved she was
+that when he came back strong and well, he did not come near her or
+her husband, and offered no congratulations. She had not deliberately
+wronged him. She knew he cared for her: but so did Lepage. A promise
+had been given to neither when Jaspar Hume went away; and after that
+she grew to love the successful, kind-mannered genius who became her
+husband. No real pledge had been broken. Even in this happiness of
+hers, sitting once again at her husband’s feet, she thought with tender
+kindness of the man who had cared for her eleven years ago; and who had
+but now saved her husband.
+
+“He has not succeeded in life,” she repeated softly. Looking down at
+her, his brow burning with a white heat, Lepage said: “He is a great
+man, Rose.”
+
+“I am sure he is a good man,” she added.
+
+Perhaps Lepage had borrowed some strength not all his own, for he said
+almost sternly: “He is a great man.”
+
+His wife looked up half-startled and said: “Very well, dear; he is a
+good man--and a great man.”
+
+The sunlight still came in through the open door. The Saskatchewan
+flowed swiftly between its verdant banks, an eagle went floating away to
+the west, robins made vocal a solitary tree a few yards away, troopers
+moved backwards and forwards across the square, and a hen and her
+chickens came fluttering to the threshold. The wife looked at the yellow
+brood drawing close to their mother, and her eyes grew wistful. She
+thought of their one baby asleep in an English grave. But thinking of
+the words of the captain of the White Guard, Lepage said firmly: “We
+will begin the world again.”
+
+She smiled, and rose to kiss him as the hen and chickens hastened away
+from the door, and a clear bugle call sounded in the square.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+Eleven years have gone since that scene was enacted at Edmonton.
+
+A great gathering is dispersing from a hall in Piccadilly. It has been
+drawn together to do honour to a man who has achieved a triumph in
+engineering science. As he steps from the platform to go, he is greeted
+by a fusilade of cheers. He bows calmly and kindly. He is a man of
+vigorous yet reserved aspect; he has a rare individuality. He receives
+with a quiet cordiality the personal congratulations of his friends. He
+remains for some time in conversation with a royal duke, who takes his
+arm, and with him passes into the street. The duke is a member of this
+great man’s club, and offers him a seat in his brougham. Amid the cheers
+of the people they drive away together. Inside the club there are fresh
+congratulations, and it is proposed to arrange an impromptu dinner,
+at which the duke will preside. But with modesty and honest thanks
+the great man declines. He pleads an engagement. He had pleaded this
+engagement the day before to a well-known society. After his health is
+proposed, he makes his adieux, and leaving the club, walks away towards
+a West-end square. In one of its streets he pauses, and enters
+a building called “Providence Chambers.” His servant hands him a
+cablegram. He passes to his library, and, standing before the fire,
+opens it. It reads: “My wife and I send congratulations to the great
+man.”
+
+Jaspar Hume stands for a moment looking at the fire, and then says
+simply: “I wish poor old Bouche were here.” He then sits down and writes
+this letter:
+
+   My dear Friends,--Your cablegram has made me glad. The day is over.
+   My latest idea was more successful than I even dared to hope; and
+   the world has been kind. I went down to see your boy, Jaspar, at
+   Clifton last week. It was his birthday, you know--nine years old,
+   and a clever, strong-minded little fellow. He is quite contented.
+   As he is my god-child, I again claimed the right of putting a
+   thousand dollars to his credit in the bank,--I have to speak of
+   dollars to you people living in Canada--which I have done on his
+   every birthday. When he is twenty-one he will have twenty-one
+   thousand dollars--quite enough for a start in life. We get along
+   well together, and I think he will develop a fine faculty for
+   science. In the summer, as I said, I will bring him over to you.
+   There is nothing more to say to-night except that I am as always,
+
+          Your faithful and loving friend,
+                            JASPAR HUME.
+
+A moment after the letter was finished, the servant entered and
+announced “Mr. Late Carscallen.” With a smile and hearty greeting the
+great man and this member of the White Guard met. It was to entertain
+his old arctic comrade that Jaspar Hume had declined to be entertained
+by society or club. A little while after, seated at the table, the
+ex-sub-factor said: “You found your brother well, Carscallen?”
+
+The jaws moved slowly as of old. “Ay, that, and a grand meenister, sir.”
+
+“He wanted you to stay in Scotland, I suppose?”
+
+“Ay, that, but there’s no place for me like Fort Providence.”
+
+“Try this pheasant. And you are sub-factor now, Carscallen?”
+
+“There’s two of us sub-factors--Jeff Hyde and myself. Mr. Field is old,
+and can’t do much work, and trade’s heavy now.”
+
+“I know. I hear from the factor now and then. And Gaspe Toujours, what
+of him?”
+
+“He went away three years ago, and he said he’d come back. He never
+did though. Jeff Hyde believes he will. He says to me a hundred times,
+‘Carscallen, he made the sign of the cross that he’d come back from
+Saint Gabrielle; and that’s next to the Book with a papist. If he’s
+alive he’ll come.’”
+
+“Perhaps he will, Carscallen. And Cloud-in-the-Sky?”
+
+“He’s still there, and comes in and smokes with Jeff Hyde and me, as
+he used to do with you; but he doesn’t obey our orders as he did
+yours, sir. He said to me when I left: ‘You see Strong-back, tell him
+Cloud-in-the-Sky good Injun--he never forget. How!’”
+
+Jaspar Hume raised his glass with smiling and thoughtful eyes: “To
+Cloud-in-the-Sky and all who never forget!” he said.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg’s The March Of The White Guard, by Gilbert Parker
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The March of the White Guard, by Gilbert Parker
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd7; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    pre     { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+Project Gutenberg's The March Of The White Guard, by Gilbert Parker
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The March Of The White Guard
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: October 18, 2006 [EBook #6223]
+Last Updated: August 27, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARCH OF THE WHITE GUARD ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <h1>
+      THE MARCH OF THE WHITE GUARD
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Gilbert Parker
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> XI </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask Mr. Hume to come here for a moment, Gosse,&rdquo; said Field, the chief
+      factor, as he turned from the frosty window of his office at Fort
+      Providence, one of the Hudson&rsquo;s Bay Company&rsquo;s posts. The servant, or more
+      properly, Orderly-Sergeant Gosse, late of the Scots Guards, departed on
+      his errand, glancing curiously at his master&rsquo;s face as he did so. The
+      chief factor, as he turned round, unclasped his hands from behind him,
+      took a few steps forward, then standing still in the centre of the room,
+      read carefully through a letter which he had held in the fingers of his
+      right hand for the last ten minutes as he scanned the wastes of snow
+      stretching away beyond Great Slave Lake to the arctic circle. He meditated
+      a moment, went back to the window, looked out again, shook his head
+      negatively, and with a sigh, walked over to the huge fireplace. He stood
+      thoughtfully considering the floor until the door opened and sub-factor
+      Jaspar Hume entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The factor looked up and said: &ldquo;Hume, I&rsquo;ve something here that&rsquo;s been
+      worrying me a bit. This letter came in the monthly batch this morning. It
+      is from a woman. The company sends another commending the cause of the
+      woman and urging us to do all that is possible to meet her wishes. It
+      seems that her husband is a civil engineer of considerable fame. He had a
+      commission to explore the Coppermine region and a portion of the Barren
+      Grounds. He was to be gone six months. He has been gone a year. He left
+      Fort Good Hope, skirted Great Bear Lake, and reached the Coppermine River.
+      Then he sent back all of the Indians who accompanied him but two, they
+      bearing the message that he would make the Great Fish River and come down
+      by Great Slave Lake to Fort Providence. That was nine months ago. He has
+      not come here, nor to any other of the forts, so far as is known, nor has
+      any word been received from him. His wife, backed by the H.B.C., urges
+      that a relief party be sent to look for him. They and she forget that this
+      is the arctic region, and that the task is a well-nigh hopeless one. He
+      ought to have been here six months ago. Now how can we do anything? Our
+      fort is small, and there is always danger of trouble with the Indians. We
+      can&rsquo;t force men to join a relief party like this, and who will volunteer?
+      Who would lead such a party and who will make up the party to be led?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The brown face of Jaspar Hume was not mobile. It changed in expression but
+      seldom; it preserved a steady and satisfying character of intelligence and
+      force. The eyes, however, were of an inquiring, debating kind, that moved
+      from one thing to another as if to get a sense of balance before opinion
+      or judgment was expressed. The face had remained impassive, but the eyes
+      had kindled a little as the factor talked. To the factor&rsquo;s despairing
+      question there was not an immediate reply. The eyes were debating. But
+      they suddenly steadied and Jaspar Hume said sententiously: &ldquo;A relief party
+      should go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, but who is to lead them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the eyes debated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Read her letter,&rdquo; said the factor, handing it over. Jaspar Hume took it
+      and mechanically scanned it. The factor had moved towards the table for
+      his pipe or he would have seen the other start, and his nostrils slightly
+      quiver, as his eyes grew conscious of what they were seeing. Turning
+      quickly, Hume walked towards the window as though for more light, and with
+      his back to the factor he read the letter. Then he turned and said: &ldquo;I
+      think this thing should be done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The factor shrugged his shoulders slightly. &ldquo;Well, as to that, I think so
+      too, but thinking and doing are two different things, Hume.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you leave the matter in my hands until the morning?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, of course, and glad to do so. You are the only man who can arrange
+      the affair, if it is to be done at all. But I tell you, as you know, that
+      everything will depend upon a leader, even if you secure the men.... So
+      you had better keep the letter for to-night. It may help you to get the
+      men together. A woman&rsquo;s handwriting will do more than a man&rsquo;s word any
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jaspar Hume&rsquo;s eyes had been looking at the factor, but they were studying
+      something else. His face seemed not quite so fresh as it was a few minutes
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will see you at ten o&rsquo;clock to-morrow morning, Mr. Field,&rdquo; he said
+      quietly. &ldquo;Will you let Gosse come to me in an hour?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly. Good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jaspar Hume let himself out. He walked across a small square to a log
+      house and opened a door which creaked and shrieked with the frost. A dog
+      sprang upon him as he did so, and rubbed its head against his breast. He
+      touched the head as if it had been that of a child, and said: &ldquo;Lie down,
+      Bouche.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It did so, but it watched him as he doffed his dogskin cap and buffalo
+      coat. He looked round the room slowly once as though he wished to fix it
+      clearly and deeply in his mind. Then he sat down and held near the
+      firelight the letter the factor had given him. His features grew stern and
+      set as he read it. Once he paused in the reading and looked into the fire,
+      drawing his breath sharply between his teeth. Then he read it to the end
+      without a sign. A pause, and he said aloud: &ldquo;So this is how the lines meet
+      again, Varre Lepage!&rdquo; He read the last sentence of the letter aloud:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   In the hope that you may soon give me good news of my husband,
+   I am, with all respect,
+
+               Faithfully yours,
+
+                       ROSE LEPAGE.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Again he repeated: &ldquo;With all respect, faithfully yours, Rose Lepage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dog Bouche looked up. Perhaps it detected something unusual in the
+      voice. It rose, came over, and laid its head on its master&rsquo;s knee. Hume&rsquo;s
+      hand fell gently on the head, and he said to the fire: &ldquo;Ah, Rose Lepage,
+      you can write to Factor Field what you dare not write to your husband if
+      you knew. You might say to him then, &lsquo;With all love,&rsquo; but not &lsquo;With all
+      respect.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He folded the letter and put it in his pocket. Then he took the dog&rsquo;s head
+      between his hands and said: &ldquo;Listen, Bouche, and I will tell you a story.&rdquo;
+       The dog blinked, and pushed its nose against his arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ten years ago two young men who had studied and graduated together at the
+      same college were struggling together in their profession as civil
+      engineers. One was Clive Lepage and the other was Jaspar Hume. The one was
+      brilliant and persuasive, the other, persistent and studious. Lepage could
+      have succeeded in any profession; Hume had only heart and mind for one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only for one, Bouche, you understand. He lived in it, he loved it, he saw
+      great things to be achieved in it. He had got an idea. He worked at it
+      night and day, he thought it out, he developed it, he perfected it, he was
+      ready to give it to the world. But he was seized with illness, became
+      blind, and was ordered to a warm climate for a year. He left his idea, his
+      invention, behind him&mdash;his complete idea. While he was gone his bosom
+      friend stole his perfected idea&mdash;yes, stole it, and sold it for
+      twenty thousand dollars. He was called a genius, a great inventor. And
+      then he married her. You don&rsquo;t know her, Bouche. You never saw beautiful
+      Rose Varcoe, who, liking two men, chose the one who was handsome and
+      brilliant, and whom the world called a genius. Why didn&rsquo;t Jaspar Hume
+      expose him, Bouche? Proof is not always easy, and then he had to think of
+      her. One has to think of a woman in such a case, Bouche. Even a dog can
+      see that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was silent for a moment, and then he said: &ldquo;Come, Bouche. You will keep
+      secret what I show you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to a large box in the corner, unlocked it, and took out a model
+      made of brass and copper and smooth but unpolished wood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After ten years of banishment, Bouche, Hume has worked out another idea,
+      you see. It should be worth ten times the other, and the world called the
+      other the work of a genius, dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he became silent, the animal watching him the while. It had seen him
+      working at this model for many a day, but had never heard him talk so much
+      at a time as he had done this last ten minutes. He was generally a silent
+      man&mdash;decisive even to severity, careless carriers and shirking
+      under-officers thought. Yet none could complain that he was unjust. He was
+      simply straight-forward, and he had no sympathy with those who had not the
+      same quality. He had carried a drunken Indian on his back for miles, and
+      from a certain death by frost. He had, for want of a more convenient
+      punishment, promptly knocked down Jeff Hyde, the sometime bully of the
+      fort, for appropriating a bundle of furs belonging to a French half-breed,
+      Gaspe Toujours. But he nursed Jeff Hyde through an attack of pneumonia,
+      insisting at the same time that Gaspe Toujours should help him. The result
+      of it all was that Jeff Hyde and Gaspe Toujours became constant allies.
+      They both formulated their oaths by Jaspar Hume. The Indian,
+      Cloud-in-the-Sky, though by word never thanking his rescuer, could not be
+      induced to leave the fort, except on some mission with which Jaspar Hume
+      was connected. He preferred living an undignified, un-Indian life, and
+      earning food and shelter by coarsely labouring with his hands. He came at
+      least twice a week to Hume&rsquo;s log house, and, sitting down silent and
+      cross-legged before the fire, watched the sub-factor working at his
+      drawings and calculations. Sitting so for perhaps an hour or more, and
+      smoking all the time, he would rise, and with a grunt, which was answered
+      by a kindly nod, would pass out as silently as he came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now as Jaspar Hume stood looking at his &ldquo;Idea,&rdquo; Cloud-in-the-Sky
+      entered, let his blanket fall by the hearthstone and sat down upon it. If
+      Hume saw him or heard him, he at least gave no sign at first. But he said
+      at last in a low tone to the dog: &ldquo;It is finished, Bouche; it is ready for
+      the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he put it back, locked the box, and turned towards Cloud-in-the-Sky
+      and the fireplace. The Indian grunted; the other nodded with the debating
+      look again dominant in his eyes. The Indian met the look with
+      satisfaction. There was something in Jaspar Hume&rsquo;s habitual reticence and
+      decisiveness in action which appealed more to Cloud-in-the-Sky than any
+      freedom of speech could possibly have done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hume sat down, handed the Indian a pipe and tobacco, and, with arms
+      folded, watched the fire. For half an hour they sat so, white man, Indian,
+      and dog. Then Hume rose, went to a cupboard, took out some sealing wax and
+      matches, and in a moment melted wax was dropping upon the lock of the box
+      containing his Idea. He had just finished this as Sergeant Gosse knocked
+      at the door, and immediately afterwards entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gosse,&rdquo; said the sub-factor, &ldquo;find Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late
+      Carscallen, and bring them here.&rdquo; Sergeant Gosse immediately departed upon
+      this errand. Hume then turned to the Indian, and said &ldquo;Cloud-in-the-Sky, I
+      want you to go a long journey hereaway to the Barren Grounds. Have twelve
+      dogs ready by nine to-morrow morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cloud-in-the-Sky shook his head thoughtfully, and then after a pause said:
+      &ldquo;Strong-back go too?&rdquo; Strongback was his name for the sub-factor. But the
+      other either did not or would not hear. The Indian, however, appeared
+      satisfied, for he smoked harder afterwards, and grunted to himself many
+      times. A few moments passed, and then Sergeant Gosse entered, followed by
+      Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late Carscallen. Late Carscallen had got
+      his name &ldquo;Late&rdquo; from having been called &ldquo;The Late Mr. Carscallen&rdquo; by the
+      chief factor because of his slowness. Slow as he was, however, the stout
+      Scotsman had more than once proved himself a man of rare merit according
+      to Hume&rsquo;s ideas. He was, of course, the last to enter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men grouped themselves about the fire, Late Carscallen getting the
+      coldest corner. Each man drew his tobacco from his pocket, and, cutting
+      it, waited for Hume to speak. His eyes were debating as they rested on the
+      four. Then he took out Mrs. Lepage&rsquo;s letter, and, with the group looking
+      at him, he read it aloud. When it was finished, Cloud-in-the-Sky gave a
+      guttural assent, and Gaspe Toujours, looking at Jeff Hyde, said: &ldquo;It is
+      cold in the Barren Grounds. We shall need much tabac.&rdquo; These men could
+      read without difficulty Hume&rsquo;s reason for summoning them. To Gaspe
+      Toujours&rsquo; remark Jeff Hyde nodded affirmatively, and then all looked at
+      Late Carscallen. He opened his heavy jaws once or twice with an
+      animal-like sound, and then he said, in a general kind of way:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the Barren Grounds. But who leads?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hume was writing on a slip of paper, and he did not reply. The faces of
+      three of them showed just a shade of anxiety. They guessed who it would
+      be, but they were not sure. Cloud-in-the-Sky, however, grunted at them,
+      and raised the bowl of his pipe towards the subfactor. The anxiety then
+      seemed to disappear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For ten minutes more they sat so, all silent. Then Hume rose, handed the
+      slip of paper to Sergeant Gosse, and said: &ldquo;Attend to that at once, Gosse.
+      Examine the food and blankets closely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The five were left alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Hume spoke: &ldquo;Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, Late Carscallen, and
+      Cloud-in-the-Sky, this man, alive or dead, is between here and the Barren
+      Grounds. He must be found&mdash;for his wife&rsquo;s sake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He handed Jeff Hyde her letter. Jeff rubbed his fingers before he touched
+      the delicate and perfumed missive. Its delicacy seemed to bewilder him. He
+      said: in a rough but kindly way: &ldquo;Hope to die if I don&rsquo;t,&rdquo; and passed it
+      on to Gaspe Toujours, who did not find it necessary to speak. His comrade
+      had answered for him. Late Carscallen held it inquisitively for a moment,
+      and then his jaws opened and shut as if he were about to speak. But before
+      he did so Hume said: &ldquo;It is a long journey and a hard one. Those who go
+      may never come back. But this man was working for his country, and he has
+      got a wife&mdash;a good wife.&rdquo; He held up the letter. &ldquo;Late Carscallen
+      wants to know who will lead you. Can&rsquo;t you trust me? I will give you a
+      leader that you will follow to the Barren Grounds. To-morrow you will know
+      who he is. Are you satisfied? Will you do it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The four rose, and Cloud-in-the-Sky nodded approvingly many times. Hume
+      held out his hand. Each man shook it, Jeff Hyde first. Then he said:
+      &ldquo;Close up ranks for the H.B.C.!&rdquo; (H.B.C. meaning, of course, Hudson&rsquo;s Bay
+      Company.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a good man to lead them, these four would have stormed, alone, the
+      Heights of Balaklava.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more Hume spoke. &ldquo;Go to Gosse and get your outfits at nine to-morrow
+      morning. Cloud-in-the-Sky, have your sleds at the store at eight o&rsquo;clock,
+      to be loaded. Then all meet me at 10.15 at the office of the chief factor.
+      Good night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they passed out into the semi-arctic night, Late Carscallen with an
+      unreal obstinacy said: &ldquo;Slow march to the Barren Grounds&mdash;but who
+      leads?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Left alone Hume sat down to the pine table at one end of the room and
+      after a short hesitation began to write. For hours he sat there, rising
+      only to put wood on the fire. The result was three letters: the largest
+      addressed to a famous society in London, one to a solicitor in Montreal,
+      and one to Mr. Field, the chief factor. They were all sealed carefully.
+      Then he rose, took out his knife, and went over to the box as if to break
+      the red seal. He paused, however, sighed, and put the knife back again. As
+      he did so he felt something touch his leg. It was the dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hume drew in a sharp breath and said: &ldquo;It was all ready, Bouche; and in
+      another six months I should have been in London with it. But it will go
+      whether I go or not&mdash;whether I go or not, Bouche.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dog sprang up and put his head against his master&rsquo;s breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good dog, good dog, it&rsquo;s all right, Bouche; however it goes, it&rsquo;s all
+      right,&rdquo; said Hume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the dog lay down and watched his master until he drew the blankets to
+      his chin, and sleep drew oblivion over a fighting soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At ten o&rsquo;clock next morning Jaspar Hume presented himself at the chief
+      factor&rsquo;s office. He bore with him the letters he had written the night
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The factor said: &ldquo;Well, Hume, I am glad to see you. That woman&rsquo;s letter
+      was on my mind all night. Have you anything to propose? I suppose not,&rdquo; he
+      added despairingly, as he looked closely into the face of the other. &ldquo;Yes,
+      Mr. Field, I propose that the expedition start at noon to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Start-at noon-to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In two hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are the party?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, Late Carscallen, and Cloud-in-the-Sky.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who leads them, Hume? Who leads?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;With your permission, I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You? But, man, consider the danger and&mdash;your invention!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have considered all. Here are three letters. If we do not come back in
+      three months, you will please send this one, with the box in my room, to
+      the address on the envelope. This is for a solicitor in Montreal, which
+      you will also forward as soon as possible; and this last one is for
+      yourself; but you will not open it until the three months have passed.
+      Have I your permission to lead these men? They would not go without me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that, I know that, Hume. I can&rsquo;t say no. Go, and good luck go with
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the manly old factor turned away his head. He knew that Hume had done
+      right. He knew the possible sacrifice this man was making of all his
+      hopes, of his very life; and his sound Scotch heart appreciated the act to
+      the full. But he did not know all. He did not know that Jaspar Hume was
+      starting to search for the man who had robbed him of youth and hope and
+      genius and home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is a letter that the wife has written to her husband on the chance
+      of his getting it. You will take it with you, Hume. And the other she
+      wrote to me&mdash;shall I keep it?&rdquo; He held out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir, I will keep it, if you will allow me. It is my commission, you
+      know.&rdquo; The shadow of a smile hovered about Hume&rsquo;s lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The factor smiled kindly as he replied: &ldquo;Ah, yes, your commission&mdash;Captain
+      Jaspar Hume of&mdash;of what?&rdquo; Just then the door opened and there entered
+      the four men who had sat before the sub-factor&rsquo;s fire the night before.
+      They were dressed in white blanket costumes from head to foot, white
+      woollen capotes covering the grey fur caps they wore. Jaspar Hume ran his
+      eye over them and then answered the factor&rsquo;s question: &ldquo;Of the White
+      Guard, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;Men, you are going on a relief expedition. There
+      will be danger. You need a good leader. You have one in Captain Hume.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeff Hyde shook his head at the others with a pleased I-told-you-so
+      expression; Cloud-in-the-Sky grunted his deep approval; and Late
+      Carscallen smacked his lips in a satisfied manner and rubbed his leg with
+      a schoolboy sense of enjoyment. The factor continued: &ldquo;In the name of the
+      Hudson&rsquo;s Bay Company I will say that if you come back, having done your
+      duty faithfully, you shall be well rewarded. And I believe you will come
+      back, if it is in human power to do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here Jeff Hyde said: &ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t for reward we&rsquo;re doin&rsquo; it, Mr. Field, but
+      because Mr. Hume wished it, because we believed he&rsquo;d lead us; and for the
+      lost fellow&rsquo;s wife. We wouldn&rsquo;t have said we&rsquo;d do it, if it wasn&rsquo;t for him
+      that&rsquo;s just called us the White Guard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the bronze of the sub-factor&rsquo;s face there spread a glow more red
+      than brown, and he said simply: &ldquo;Thank you, men&rdquo;&mdash;for they had all
+      nodded assent to Jeff Hyde&rsquo;s words&mdash;&ldquo;come with me to the store. We
+      will start at noon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At noon the White Guard stood in front of the store on which the British
+      flag was hoisted with another beneath it bearing the magic letters,
+      H.B.C.: magic, because they opened to the world regions that seemed
+      destined never to know the touch of civilisation. The few inhabitants of
+      the fort were gathered at the store; the dogs and loaded sleds were at the
+      door. It wanted but two minutes to twelve when Hume came from his house,
+      dressed also in the white blanket costume, and followed by his dog,
+      Bouche. In a moment more he had placed Bouche at the head of the first
+      team of dogs. They were to have their leader too. Punctually at noon, Hume
+      shook hands with the factor, said a quick good-bye to the rest, called out
+      a friendly &ldquo;How!&rdquo; to the Indians standing near, and to the sound of a
+      hearty cheer, heartier perhaps because none had a confident hope that the
+      five would come back, the march of the White Guard began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was eighteen days after. In the shadow of a little island of pines,
+      that lies in a shivering waste of ice and snow, the White Guard were
+      camped. They were able to do this night what they had not done for days&mdash;dig
+      a great grave of snow, and building a fire of pine wood at each end of
+      this strange house, get protection and something like comfort. They sat
+      silent close to the fires. Jaspar Hume was writing with numbed fingers.
+      The extract that follows is taken from his diary. It tells that day&rsquo;s
+      life, and so gives an idea of harder, sterner days that they had spent and
+      must yet spend, on this weary journey.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   December 25th.&mdash;This is Christmas Day and Camp twenty-seven. We
+   have marched only five miles to-day. We are eighty miles from Great
+   Fish River, and the worst yet to do. We have discovered no signs.
+   Jeff Hyde has had a bad two days with his frozen foot. Gaspe
+   Toujours helps him nobly. One of the dogs died this morning.
+   Bouche is a great leader. This night&rsquo;s shelter is a god-send.
+   Cloud-in-the-Sky has a plan whereby some of us will sleep well. We
+   are in latitude 63deg 47&rsquo; and longitude 112deg 32&rsquo; 14&rdquo;. Have worked
+   out lunar observations. Have marked a tree JH/27 and raised cairn
+   No. 3.
+
+   We are able to celebrate Christmas Day with a good basin of tea and
+   our stand-by of beans cooked in fat. I was right about them: they
+   have great sustaining power. To-morrow we will start at ten
+   o&rsquo;clock.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The writing done, Jaspar Hume put his book away and turned towards the
+      rest. Cloud-in-the-Sky and Late Carscallen were smoking. Little could be
+      seen of their faces; they were snuffled to the eyes. Gaspe Toujours was
+      drinking a basin of tea, and Jeff Hyde was fitfully dozing by the fire.
+      The dogs were above in the tent&mdash;all but Bouche, who was permitted to
+      be near his master. Presently the sub-factor rose, took from a knapsack a
+      small tin pail, and put it near the fire. Then he took five little cups
+      that fitted snugly into each other, separated them, and put them also near
+      the fire. None of the party spoke. A change seemed to pass over the faces
+      of all except Cloud-in-the-Sky. He smoked on unmoved. At length Hume spoke
+      cheerily: &ldquo;Now, men, before we turn in we&rsquo;ll do something in honour of the
+      day. Liquor we none of us have touched since we started; but back there in
+      the fort, and maybe in other places too, they will be thinking of us; so
+      we&rsquo;ll drink a health to them, though it&rsquo;s but a spoonful, and to the day
+      when we see them again!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cups were passed round. The sub-factor measured out a very small
+      portion to each. They were not men of uncommon sentiment; their lives were
+      rigid and isolated and severe. Fireside comforts under fortunate
+      conditions they saw but seldom, and they were not given to expressing
+      their feelings demonstratively. But each man then, save Cloud-in-the-Sky,
+      had some memory worth a resurrection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jaspar Hume raised his cup; the rest followed his example. &ldquo;To absent
+      friends and the day when we see them again!&rdquo; he said; and they all drank.
+      Gaspe Toujours drank solemnly, and, as though no one was near, made the
+      sign of the cross; for his memory was with a dark-eyed, soft-cheeked
+      habitant girl of the parish of Saint Gabrielle, whom he had left behind
+      seven years before, and had never seen since. Word had come from the
+      parish priest that she was dying, and though he wrote back in his homely
+      patois of his grief, and begged that the good father would write again, no
+      word had ever come. He thought of her now as one for whom the candles had
+      been lighted and masses had been said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jeff Hyde&rsquo;s eyes were bright, and suffering as he was, the heart in
+      him was brave and hopeful. He was thinking of a glorious Christmas Day
+      upon the Madawaska River three years agone; of Adam Henry, the blind
+      fiddler; of bright, warm-hearted Pattie Chown, the belle of the ball, and
+      the long drive home in the frosty night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late Carscallen was thinking of a brother whom he had heard preach his
+      first sermon in Edinburgh twenty years before. And Late Carscallen, slow
+      of speech and thought, had been full of pride and love of that brilliant
+      brother. In the natural course of things, they had drifted apart, the slow
+      and uncouth one to make his home at last in the Far North, and to be this
+      night on his way to the Barren Grounds. But as he stood with the cup to
+      his lips he recalled the words of a newspaper paragraph of a few months
+      before. It stated that &ldquo;the Reverend James Carscallen, D.D., preached
+      before Her Majesty on Whitsunday, and had the honour of lunching with Her
+      Majesty afterwards.&rdquo; Remembering that, Late Carscallen rubbed his left
+      hand joyfully against his blanketed leg and drank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cloud-in-the-Sky&rsquo;s thoughts were with the present, and his &ldquo;Ugh!&rdquo; of
+      approval was one of the senses purely. Instead of drinking to absent
+      friends he looked at the sub-factor and said: &ldquo;How!&rdquo; He drank to the
+      subfactor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jaspar Hume had a memory of childhood; of a house beside a swift-flowing
+      river, where a gentle widowed mother braced her heart against misfortune
+      and denied herself and slaved that her son might be educated. He had said
+      to her that some day he would be a great man, and she would be paid back a
+      hundredfold. And he had worked hard at school, very hard. But one cold day
+      of spring a message came to the school, and he sped homewards to the house
+      beside the dark river down which the ice was floating,&mdash;he would
+      remember that floating ice to his last day, and entered a quiet room where
+      a white-faced woman was breathing away her life. And he fell at her side
+      and kissed her hand and called to her; and she waked for a moment only and
+      smiled on him, and said: &ldquo;Be good, my boy, and God will make you great.&rdquo;
+       Then she said she was cold, and some one felt her feet&mdash;a kind old
+      soul who shook her head sadly at him; and a voice, rising out of a strange
+      smiling languor, murmured: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll away, I&rsquo;ll away to the Promised Land&mdash;to
+      the Promised Land.... It is cold&mdash;so cold&mdash;God keep my boy!&rdquo;
+       Then the voice ceased, and the kind old soul who had looked at him,
+      pityingly folded her arms about him, and drawing his brown head to her
+      breast, kissed him with flowing eyes and whispered: &ldquo;Come away, laddie,
+      come away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he came back in the night and sat beside her, and remained there till
+      the sun grew bright, and then through another day and night, until they
+      bore her out of the little house by the river to the frozen hill-side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sitting here in this winter desolation Jaspar Hume once more beheld these
+      scenes of twenty years before and followed himself, a poor dispensing
+      clerk in a doctor&rsquo;s office, working for that dream of achievement in which
+      his mother believed; for which she hoped. And following further the boy
+      that was himself, he saw a friendless first-year man at college, soon,
+      however, to make a friend of Clive Lepage, and to see always the best of
+      that friend, being himself so true. At last the day came when they both
+      graduated together in science, a bright and happy day, succeeded by one
+      still brighter, when they both entered a great firm as junior partners.
+      Afterwards befell the meeting with Rose Varcoe; and he thought of how he
+      praised his friend Lepage to her, and brought him to be introduced to her.
+      He recalled all those visions that came to him when, his professional
+      triumphs achieved, he should have a happy home, and happy faces by his
+      fireside. And the face was to be that of Rose Varcoe, and the others,
+      faces of those who should be like her and like himself. He saw, or rather
+      felt, that face clouded and anxious when he went away ill and blind for
+      health&rsquo;s sake. He did not write to her. The doctors forbade him that. He
+      did not ask her to write, for his was so steadfast a nature that he did
+      not need letters to keep him true; and he thought she must be the same. He
+      did not understand a woman&rsquo;s heart, how it needs remembrances, and needs
+      to give remembrances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hume&rsquo;s face in the light of this fire seemed calm and cold, yet behind it
+      was an agony of memory&mdash;the memory of the day when he discovered that
+      Lepage was married to Rose, and that the trusted friend had grown famous
+      and well-to-do on the offspring of his brain. His first thought had been
+      one of fierce determination to expose this man who had falsified all
+      trust. But then came the thought of the girl, and, most of all, there came
+      the words of his dying mother, &ldquo;Be good, my boy, and God will make you
+      great&rdquo;; and for his mother&rsquo;s sake he had compassion on the girl, and
+      sought no restitution from her husband. And now, ten years later, he did
+      not regret that he had stayed his hand. The world had ceased to call
+      Lepage a genius. He had not fulfilled the hope once held of him. Hume knew
+      this from occasional references in scientific journals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now he was making this journey to save, if he could, Lepage&rsquo;s life.
+      Though just on the verge of a new era in his career&mdash;to give to the
+      world the fruit of ten years&rsquo; thought and labour, he had set all behind
+      him, that he might be true to the friendship of his youth, that he might
+      be clear of the strokes of conscience to the last hour of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking round him now, the debating look came again into his eyes. He
+      placed his hand in his breast, and let it rest there for a moment. The
+      look became certain and steady, the hand was drawn out, and in it was a
+      Book of Common Prayer. Upon the fly-leaf was written: &ldquo;Jane Hume, to her
+      dear son Jaspar, on his twelfth birthday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These men of the White Guard were not used to religious practices,
+      whatever their past had been in that regard, and at any other time they
+      might have been surprised at this action of their leader. Under some
+      circumstances it might have lessened their opinion of him; but his
+      influence over them now was complete. They knew they were getting nearer
+      to him than they had ever done; even Cloud-in-the-Sky appreciated that.
+      Hume spoke no word to them, but looked at them and stood up. They all did
+      the same, Jeff Hyde leaning on the shoulders of Gaspe Toujours. He read
+      first, four verses of the Thirty-first Psalm, then followed the prayer of
+      St. Chrysostom, and the beautiful collect which appeals to the Almighty to
+      mercifully look upon the infirmities of men, and to stretch forth His hand
+      to keep and defend them in all dangers and necessities. Late Carscallen,
+      after a long pause, said &ldquo;Amen,&rdquo; and Jeff said in a whisper to Gaspe
+      Toujours: &ldquo;That&rsquo;s to the point. Infirmities and dangers and necessities is
+      what troubles us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately after, at a sign from the sub-factor, Cloud-in-the-Sky began
+      to transfer the burning wood from one fire to the other until only hot
+      ashes were left where a great blaze had been. Over these ashes pine twigs
+      and branches were spread, and over them again blankets. The word was then
+      given to turn in, and Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late Carscallen lay
+      down in this comfortable bed. Each wished to give way to their captain,
+      but he would not consent. He and Cloud-in-the-Sky wrapped themselves in
+      their blankets like mummies, covering the head completely, and under the
+      arctic sky they slept alone in an austere and tenantless world. They never
+      know how loftily sardonic Nature can be who have not seen that land where
+      the mercury freezes in the tubes, and there is light but no warmth in the
+      smile of the sun. Not Sturt in the heart of Australia with the mercury
+      bursting the fevered tubes, with the finger-nails breaking like brittle
+      glass, with the ink drying instantly on the pen, with the hair fading and
+      falling off, would, if he could, have exchanged his lot for that of the
+      White Guard. They were in a frozen endlessness that stretched away to a
+      world where never voice of man or clip of wing or tread of animal is
+      heard. It is the threshold to the undiscovered country, to that untouched
+      north whose fields of white are only furrowed by the giant forces of the
+      elements; on whose frigid hearthstone no fire is ever lit; where the
+      electric phantoms of a nightless land pass and repass, and are never
+      still; where the magic needle points not towards the north but darkly
+      downward; where the sun never stretches warm hands to him who dares
+      confront the terrors of eternal snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The White Guard slept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Captain; leave me here and push on to Manitou Mountain. You ought to
+      make it in two days. I&rsquo;m just as safe here as on the sleds, and less
+      trouble. A blind man&rsquo;s no good. I&rsquo;ll have a good rest while you&rsquo;re gone,
+      and then perhaps my eyes will come out right. My foot&rsquo;s nearly well now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeff Hyde was snow-blind. The giant of the party had suffered most.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Hume said in reply: &ldquo;I won&rsquo;t leave you alone. The dogs can carry you
+      as they&rsquo;ve done for the last ten days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Jeff replied: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m as safe here as marching, and safer. When the dogs
+      are not carrying me, nor any one leading me, you can get on faster; and
+      that means everything to us, now don&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hume met the eyes of Gaspe Toujours. He read them. Then he said to Jeff:
+      &ldquo;It shall be as you wish. Late Carscallen, Cloud-in-the-Sky, and myself
+      will push on to Manitou Mountain. You and Gaspe Toujours will remain
+      here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeff Hyde&rsquo;s blind eyes turned towards Gaspe Toujours, who said: &ldquo;Yes. We
+      have plenty tabac.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A tent was set up, provisions were put in it, a spirit-lamp and matches
+      were added, and the simple menage was complete. Not quite. Jaspar Hume
+      looked round. There was not a tree in sight. He stooped and cut away a
+      pole that was used for strengthening the runners of the sleds, fastened it
+      firmly in the ground, and tied to it a red woollen scarf, used for
+      tightening his white blankets round him. Then he said: &ldquo;Be sure and keep
+      that flying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeff&rsquo;s face was turned towards the north. The blindman&rsquo;s instinct was
+      coming to him. Far off white eddying drifts were rising over long hillocks
+      of snow. When he turned round again his face was troubled. It grew more
+      troubled, then it brightened up again, and he said to Hume: &ldquo;Captain,
+      would you leave that book with me till you come back&mdash;that about
+      infirmities, dangers, and necessities? I knew a river-boss who used to
+      carry an old spelling-book round with him for luck. It seems to me as if
+      that book of yours, Captain, would bring luck to this part of the White
+      Guard, that bein&rsquo; out at heels like has to stay behind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hume had borne the sufferings of his life with courage; he had led this
+      terrible tramp with no tremor at his heart for himself; he was seeking to
+      perform a perilous act without any inward shrinking; but Jeff&rsquo;s request
+      was the greatest trial of this critical period in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeff felt, if he could not see, the hesitation of his chief. His rough but
+      kind instincts told him something was wrong, and he hastened to add: &ldquo;Beg
+      your pardon, Mr. Hume, it ain&rsquo;t no matter. I oughtn&rsquo;t have asked you for
+      it. But it&rsquo;s just like me. I&rsquo;ve been a chain on the leg of the White Guard
+      this whole tramp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The moment of hesitation had passed before Jeff had said half-a-dozen
+      words, and Hume put the book in his hands with the words: &ldquo;No, Jeff, take
+      it. It will bring luck to the White Guard. Keep it safe until I come
+      back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeff took the book, but hearing a guttural &ldquo;Ugh&rdquo; behind him, he turned
+      round defiantly. Cloud-in-the-Sky touched his arm and said: &ldquo;Good!
+      Strong-back book&mdash;good!&rdquo; Jeff was satisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point they parted, Jeff and Gaspe Toujours remaining, and Hume and
+      his two followers going on towards Manitou Mountain. There seemed little
+      probability that Clive Lepage would be found. In their progress eastward
+      and northward they had covered wide areas of country, dividing and meeting
+      again after stated hours of travel, but not a sign had been seen; neither
+      cairn nor staff nor any mark of human presence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hume had noticed Jeff Hyde&rsquo;s face when it was turned to the eddying drifts
+      of the north, and he understood what was in the experienced huntsman&rsquo;s
+      mind. He knew that severe weather was before them, and that the greatest
+      danger of the journey was to be encountered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night they saw Manitou Mountain, cold, colossal, harshly calm; and
+      jointly with that sight there arose a shrieking, biting, fearful north
+      wind. It blew upon them in cruel menace of conquest, in piercing
+      inclemency. It struck a freezing terror to their hearts, and grew in
+      violent attack until, as if repenting that it had foregone its power to
+      save, the sun suddenly grew red and angry, and spread out a shield of
+      blood along the bastions of the west. The wind shrank back and grew less
+      murderous, and ere the last red arrow shot up behind the lonely western
+      wall of white, the three knew that the worst of the storm had passed and
+      that death had drawn back for a time. What Hume thought may be gathered
+      from his diary; for ere he crawled in among the dogs and stretched himself
+      out beside Bouche, he wrote these words with aching fingers:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   January 10th: Camp 39.&mdash;A bitter day. We are facing three fears
+   now: the fate of those we left behind; Lepage&rsquo;s fate; and the going
+   back. We are twenty miles from Manitou Mountain. If he is found,
+   I should not fear the return journey; success gives hope. But we
+   trust in God.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Another day passed and at night, after a hard march, they camped five
+      miles from Manitou Mountain. And not a sign! But Hume felt there was a
+      faint chance of Lepage being found at this mountain. His iron frame had
+      borne the hardships of this journey well; his strong heart better. But
+      this night an unaccountable weakness possessed him. Mind and body were on
+      the verge of helplessness. Bouche seemed to understand this, and when he
+      was unhitched from the team of dogs, now dwindled to seven, he leaped upon
+      his master&rsquo;s breast. It was as if some instinct of sympathy, of
+      prescience, was passing between the man and the dog. Hume bent his head
+      down to Bouche for an instant and rubbed his side kindly; then he said,
+      with a tired accent: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right, old dog, it&rsquo;s all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hume did not sleep well at first, but at length oblivion came. He waked to
+      feel Bouche tugging at his blankets. It was noon. Late Carscallen and
+      Cloud-in-the-Sky were still sleeping&mdash;inanimate bundles among the
+      dogs. In an hour they were on their way again, and towards sunset they had
+      reached the foot of Manitou Mountain. Abruptly from the plain rose this
+      mighty mound, blue and white upon a black base. A few straggling pines
+      grew near its foot, defying latitude, as the mountain itself defied the
+      calculations of geographers and geologists. A halt was called. Late
+      Carscallen and Cloud-in-the-Sky looked at the chief. His eyes were
+      scanning the mountain closely. Suddenly he motioned. A hundred feet up
+      there was a great round hole in the solid rock, and from this hole there
+      came a feeble cloud of smoke! The other two saw also. Cloud-in-the-Sky
+      gave a wild whoop, and from the mountain there came, a moment after, a
+      faint replica of the sound. It was not an echo, for there appeared at the
+      mouth of the cave an Indian, who made feeble signs for them to come. In a
+      little while they were at the cave. As Jaspar Hume entered,
+      Cloud-in-the-Sky and the stalwart but emaciated Indian who had beckoned to
+      them spoke to each other in the Chinook language, the jargon common to all
+      Indians of the West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jaspar Hume saw a form reclining on a great bundle of pine branches, and
+      he knew what Rose Lepage had prayed for was come to pass. By the
+      flickering light of a handful of fire he saw Lepage&mdash;rather what was
+      left of him&mdash;a shadow of energy, a heap of nerveless bones. His eyes
+      were shut, but as Hume, with a quiver of memory and sympathy at his heart,
+      stood for an instant, and looked at the man whom he had cherished as a
+      friend and found an enemy, Lepage&rsquo;s lips moved and a weak voice said: &ldquo;Who
+      is there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come-near-me,&mdash;friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hume made a motion to Late Carscallen, who was heating some liquor at the
+      fire, and then he stooped and lifted up the sick man&rsquo;s head, and took his
+      hand. &ldquo;You have come&mdash;to save me!&rdquo; whispered the weak voice again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I&rsquo;ve come to save you.&rdquo; This voice was strong and clear and true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I seem&mdash;to have&mdash;heard&mdash;your voice before&mdash;somewhere
+      before&mdash;I seem to&mdash;have&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he had fainted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hume poured a little liquor down the sick man&rsquo;s throat, and Late
+      Carscallen chafed the delicate hand&mdash;delicate in health, it was like
+      that of a little child now. When breath came again Hume whispered to his
+      helper &ldquo;Take Cloud-in-the-Sky and get wood; bring fresh branches. Then
+      clear one of the sleds, and we will start back with him in the early
+      morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Late Carscallen, looking at the skeleton-like figure, said: &ldquo;He will never
+      get there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he will get there,&rdquo; was Hume&rsquo;s reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he is dying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He goes with me to Fort Providence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, to Providence he goes, but not with you,&rdquo; said Late Carscallen,
+      doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anger flashed in Hume&rsquo;s eye, but he said quietly &ldquo;Get the wood,
+      Carscallen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      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. &ldquo;You&mdash;you&mdash;are Jaspar
+      Hume,&rdquo; his voice said in an awed whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; The hands of the sub-factor chafed those of the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you said you were a friend, and come to save me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have come to save you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a shiver of the sufferer&rsquo;s body. This discovery would either
+      make him stronger or kill him. Hume knew this, and said: &ldquo;Lepage, the past
+      is past and dead to me; let it be so to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How&mdash;did you know&mdash;about me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was at Fort Providence. There came letters from the Hudson&rsquo;s Bay
+      Company, and from your wife, saying that you were making this journey, and
+      were six months behind&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My wife&mdash;Rose!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a letter for you from her. She is on her way to Canada. We are to
+      take you to her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To take me&mdash;to her.&rdquo; Lepage shook his head sadly, but he pressed to
+      his lips the letter that Hume had given him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To take you to her, Lepage.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I shall never see her again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you, you shall. You can live if you will. You owe that to her&mdash;to
+      me&mdash;to God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To her&mdash;to you&mdash;to God. I have been true to none. I have been
+      punished. I shall die here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You shall go to Fort Providence. Do that in payment of your debt to me,
+      Lepage. I demand that.&rdquo; In this transgressor there was a latent spark of
+      honour, a sense of justice that might have been developed to great causes,
+      if some strong nature, seeing his weaknesses, had not condoned them, but
+      had appealed to the natural chivalry of an impressionable, vain, and weak
+      character. He struggled to meet Hume&rsquo;s eyes, and doing so, he gained
+      confidence and said: &ldquo;I will try to live. I will do you justice&mdash;yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your first duty is to eat and drink. We start for Fort Providence
+      to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sick man stretched out his hand. &ldquo;Food! Food!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In tiny portions food and drink were given to him, and his strength
+      sensibly increased. The cave was soon aglow with the fire kindled by Late
+      Carscallen and Cloud-in-the-Sky. There was little speaking, for the sick
+      man soon fell asleep. Lepage&rsquo;s Indian told Cloud-in-the-Sky the tale of
+      their march&mdash;how the other Indian and the dogs died; how his master
+      became ill as they were starting towards Fort Providence from Manitou
+      Mountain in the summer weather; how they turned back and took refuge in
+      this cave; how month by month they had lived on what would hardly keep a
+      rabbit alive; and how, at last, his master urged him to press on with his
+      papers; but he would not, and stayed until this day, when the last bit of
+      food had been eaten, and they were found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next morning Lepage was placed upon a sled, and they started back,
+      Bouche barking joyfully as he led off, with Cloud-in-the-Sky beside him.
+      There was light in the faces of all, though the light could not be seen by
+      reason of their being muffled so. All day they travelled, scarcely
+      halting, Lepage&rsquo;s Indian marching well. Often the corpse-like bundle on
+      the sled was disturbed, and biscuits wet in brandy and bits of preserved
+      venison were given.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night Hume said to Late Carscallen: &ldquo;I am going to start at the first
+      light of the morning to get to Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde as soon as
+      possible. Follow as fast as you can. He will be safe, if you give him food
+      and drink often. I shall get to the place where we left them about noon;
+      you should reach there at night or early the next morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hadn&rsquo;t you better take Bouche with you?&rdquo; said Late Carscallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sub-factor thought a moment, and then said: &ldquo;No, he is needed most
+      where he is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At noon the next day Jaspar Hume looked round upon a billowy plain of sun
+      and ice, but saw no staff, no signal, no tent, no sign of human life: of
+      Gaspe Toujours or of Jeff Hyde. His strong heart quailed. Had he lost his
+      way? He looked at the sun. He was not sure. He consulted his compass, but
+      it quivered hesitatingly. For awhile that wild bewilderment which seizes
+      upon the minds of the strongest, when lost, mastered him, in spite of his
+      struggles against it. He moved in a maze of half-blindness, half-delirium.
+      He was lost in it, swayed by it. He began to wander about; and there grew
+      upon his senses strange delights and reeling agonies. He heard church
+      bells, he caught at butterflies, he tumbled in new-mown hay, he wandered
+      in a tropic garden. But in the hay a wasp stung him, and the butterfly
+      changed to a curling black snake that struck at him and glided to a
+      dark-flowing river full of floating ice, and up from the river a white
+      hand was thrust, and it beckoned him&mdash;beckoned him. He shut his eyes
+      and moved towards it, but a voice stopped him, and it said, &ldquo;Come away,
+      come away,&rdquo; and two arms folded him round, and as he went back from the
+      shore he stumbled and fell, and... What is this? A yielding mass at his
+      feet&mdash;a mass that stirs! He clutches at it, he tears away the snow,
+      he calls aloud&mdash;and his voice has a faraway unnatural sound&mdash;&ldquo;Gaspe
+      Toujours! Gaspe Toujours!&rdquo; Then the figure of a man shakes itself in the
+      snow, and a voice says: &ldquo;Ay, ay, sir!&rdquo; Yes, it is Gaspe Toujours! And
+      beside him lies Jeff Hyde, and alive. &ldquo;Ay, ay, sir, alive!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jaspar Hume&rsquo;s mind was itself again. It had but suffered for a moment the
+      agony of delirium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde had lain down in the tent the night of the
+      great wind, and had gone to sleep at once. The staff had been blown down,
+      the tent had fallen over them, the drift had covered them, and for three
+      days they had slept beneath the snow, never waking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jeff Hyde&rsquo;s sight was come again to him. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve come back for the book,&rdquo;
+       he said. &ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t go on without it. You ought to have taken it
+      yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew it from his pocket. He was dazed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Jeff, I&rsquo;ve not come back for that, and I did not leave you yesterday:
+      it is three days and more since we parted. The book has brought us luck,
+      and the best. We have found our man; and they&rsquo;ll be here to-night with
+      him. I came on ahead to see how you fared.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In that frost-bitten world Jeff Hyde uncovered his head for a moment.
+      &ldquo;Gaspe Toujours is a papist,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but he read me some of that book
+      the day you left, and one thing we went to sleep on: it was that about
+      &lsquo;Lightenin&rsquo; the darkness, and defendin&rsquo; us from all the perils and dangers
+      of this night.&rsquo;&rdquo; Here Gaspe Toujours made the sign of the cross. Jeff Hyde
+      continued half apologetically for his comrade: &ldquo;That comes natural to
+      Gaspe Toujours&mdash;I guess it always does to papists. But I never had
+      any trainin&rsquo; that way, and I had to turn the thing over and over, and I
+      fell asleep on it. And when I wake up three days after, here&rsquo;s my eyes as
+      fresh as daisies, and you back, sir, and the thing done that we come to
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He put the Book into Hume&rsquo;s hands and at that moment Gaspe Toujours said:
+      &ldquo;See!&rdquo; Far off, against the eastern horizon, appeared a group of moving
+      figures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night the broken segments of the White Guard were reunited, and Clive
+      Lepage slept by the side of Jaspar Hume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Napoleon might have marched back from Moscow with undecimated legions
+      safely enough, if the heart of those legions had not been crushed. The
+      White Guard, with their faces turned homeward, and the man they had sought
+      for in their care, seemed to have acquired new strength. Through days of
+      dreadful cold, through nights of appalling fierceness, through storm upon
+      the plains that made for them paralysing coverlets, they marched. And if
+      Lepage did not grow stronger, life at least was kept in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was little speech among them, but once in a while Gaspe Toujours
+      sang snatches of the songs of the voyageurs of the great rivers; and the
+      hearts of all were strong. Between Bouche and his master there was
+      occasional demonstration. On the twentieth day homeward, Hume said with
+      his hand on the dog&rsquo;s head &ldquo;It had to be done, Bouche; even a dog could
+      see that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it was &ldquo;all right&rdquo; for the White Guard. One day when the sun was
+      warmer than usual over Fort Providence, and just sixty-five days since
+      that cheer had gone up from apprehensive hearts for brave men going out
+      into the Barren Grounds, Sergeant Gosse, who, every day, and of late many
+      times a day, had swept the north-east with a field-glass, rushed into the
+      chief-factor&rsquo;s office, and with a broken voice cried: &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve all come!
+      They&rsquo;ve come!&rdquo; Then he leaned his arm and head against the wall and
+      sobbed. And the old factor rose from his chair tremblingly, and said his
+      thank-god, and went hurriedly into the square. He did not go steadily,
+      however, the joyous news had shaken him, sturdy old pioneer as he was. A
+      fringe of white had grown about his temples in the last two months. The
+      people of the fort had said they had never seen him so irascible, yet so
+      gentle; so uneasy, yet so reserved; so stern about the mouth, yet so kind
+      about the eyes as he had been since Hume had gone on this desperate
+      errand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already the handful of people at the fort had gathered. Indians left the
+      store, and joined the rest; the factor and Sergeant Gosse set out to meet
+      the little army of relief. To the factor&rsquo;s &ldquo;In the name of the Hudson&rsquo;s
+      Bay Company, Mr. Hume,&rdquo; when they met there came &ldquo;By the help of God,
+      sir,&rdquo; and he pointed to the sled whereon Lepage lay. A feeble hand was
+      clasped in the burly hand of the factor, and then they all fell into line
+      again, Cloud-in-the-Sky running ahead of the dogs. Snow had fallen on
+      them, and as they entered the stockade, men and dogs were white from head
+      to foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The White Guard had come back. Jaspar Hume as simply acknowledged his
+      strident welcome as he had done the God-speed two months and more ago.
+      With the factor he bore the sick man in, and laid him on his own bed. Then
+      he came outside again, and when they cheered him once more, he said: &ldquo;We
+      have come safe through, and I&rsquo;m thankful. But remember that my comrades in
+      this march deserve your cheers more than I. Without them I couldn&rsquo;t have
+      done anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In our infirmities and in all our dangers and necessities,&rdquo; added Jeff
+      Hyde. &ldquo;The luck of the world was in that book!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In another half-hour the White Guard was at ease, and four of them were
+      gathered about the great stove in the store, Cloud-in-the-Sky smoking
+      placidly, and full of guttural emphasis; Late Carscallen moving his
+      animal-like jaws with a sense of satisfaction; Gaspe Toujours talking in
+      Chinook to the Indians, in patois to the French clerk, and in broken
+      English to them all; and Jeff Hyde exclaiming on the wonders of the march,
+      the finding of Lepage at Manitou Mountain, and of himself and Gaspe
+      Toujours buried in the snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In Hume&rsquo;s house at midnight Lepage lay asleep with his wife&rsquo;s letters&mdash;received
+      through the factor&mdash;in his hand. The firelight played upon a dark,
+      disappointed face&mdash;a doomed, prematurely old face, as it seemed to
+      the factor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew him, then,&rdquo; the factor said, after a long silence, with a
+      gesture towards the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, well, years ago,&rdquo; replied Hume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just then the sick man stirred in his sleep, and he said disjointedly:
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll make it all right to you, Hume.&rdquo; Then came a pause, and a quicker
+      utterance: &ldquo;Forgive&mdash;forgive me, Rose.&rdquo; The factor got up, and turned
+      to go, and Hume, with a sorrowful gesture, went over to the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the voice said: &ldquo;Ten years&mdash;I have repented ten years&mdash;I
+      dare not speak&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The factor touched Hume&rsquo;s arm. &ldquo;He has fever. You and I must nurse him,
+      Hume. You can trust me&mdash;you understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I can trust you,&rdquo; was the reply. &ldquo;But I can tell you nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not want to know anything. If you can watch till two o&rsquo;clock I will
+      relieve you. I&rsquo;ll send the medicine chest over. You know how to treat
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The factor passed out, and the other was left alone with the man who had
+      wronged him. The feeling most active in his mind was pity, and, as he
+      prepared a draught from his own stock of medicines, he thought the past
+      and the present all over. He knew that however much he had suffered, this
+      man had suffered more. In this silent night there was broken down any
+      barrier that may have stood between Lepage and his complete compassion.
+      Having effaced himself from the calculation, justice became forgiveness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He moistened the sick man&rsquo;s lips, and bathed his forehead, and roused him
+      once to take a quieting powder. Then he sat down and wrote to Rose Lepage.
+      But he tore the letter up again and said to the dog: &ldquo;No, Bouche, I can&rsquo;t;
+      the factor must do it. She needn&rsquo;t know yet that it was I who saved him.
+      It doesn&rsquo;t make any burden of gratitude, if my name is kept out of it. The
+      factor mustn&rsquo;t mention me, Bouche&mdash;not yet. When he is well we will
+      go to London with It, Bouche, and we needn&rsquo;t meet her. It will be all
+      right, Bouche, all right!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dog seemed to understand; for he went over to the box that held It;
+      and looked at his master. Then Jaspar Hume rose, broke the seal, unlocked
+      the box and opened it; but he heard the sick man moan, and he closed it
+      again and went over to the bed. The feeble voice said: &ldquo;I must speak&mdash;I
+      cannot die so&mdash;not so.&rdquo; Hume moistened the lips once, put a cold
+      cloth on the fevered head, and then sat down by the fire again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lepage slept at last. The restless hands grew quiet, the breath became
+      more regular, the tortured mind found a short peace. With the old debating
+      look in his eyes, Hume sat there watching until the factor relieved him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      February and March and April were past, and May was come. Lepage had had a
+      hard struggle for life, but he had survived. For weeks every night there
+      was a repetition of that first night after the return: delirious
+      self-condemnation, entreaty, appeal to his wife, and Hume&rsquo;s name mentioned
+      in shuddering remorse. With the help of the Indian who had shared the sick
+      man&rsquo;s sufferings in the Barren Grounds, the factor and Hume nursed him
+      back to life. After the first night no word had passed between the two
+      watchers regarding the substance of Lepage&rsquo;s delirium. But one evening the
+      factor was watching alone, and the repentant man from his feverish sleep
+      cried out: &ldquo;Hush, hush! don&rsquo;t let them know&mdash;I stole them both, and
+      Rose did not know. Rose did not know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The factor rose and walked away. The dog was watching him. He said to
+      Bouche: &ldquo;You have a good master, Bouche.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In an arm-chair made of hickory and birch-bark by Cloud-in-the-Sky, Lepage
+      sat reading a letter from his wife. She was at Winnipeg, and was coming
+      west as far as Regina to meet him on his way down. He looked a wreck; but
+      a handsome wreck. His refined features, his soft black beard and blue
+      eyes, his graceful hand and gentle manners, seemed not to belong to an
+      evil-hearted man. He sat in the sunlight at the door, wrapped about in
+      moose and beaver skins. The world of plain and wood was glad. Not so
+      Lepage. He sat and thought of what was to come. He had hoped at times that
+      he would die, but twice Hume had said: &ldquo;I demand your life. You owe it to
+      your wife&mdash;to me.&rdquo; He had pulled his heart up to this demand and had
+      lived. But what lay before him? He saw a stony track, and he shuddered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he sat there facing the future, Hume came to him and said: &ldquo;If you feel
+      up to it, Lepage, we will start for Edmonton on Monday. I think it will be
+      quite safe, and your wife is anxious. I shall accompany you as far as
+      Edmonton; you can then proceed by easy stages, in this pleasant weather.
+      Are you ready to go?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite ready,&rdquo; was the reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      On a beautiful May evening Lepage, Hume, and the White Guard were welcomed
+      at Fort Edmonton by the officer in command of the Mounted Police. They
+      were to enjoy the hospitality of the fort for a couple of days. Hume was
+      to go back with Cloud-in-the-Sky and Late Carscallen, and a number of
+      Indian carriers; for this was a journey of business too. Gaspe Toujours
+      and Jeff Hyde were to press on with Lepage, who was now much stronger and
+      better. One day passed, and on the following morning Hume gave
+      instructions to Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde, and made preparations for
+      his going back. He was standing in the Barracks Square, when a horseman
+      rode in and made inquiry of a sergeant standing near, if Lepage had
+      arrived at the fort. A few words brought out the fact that Rose Lepage was
+      nearing the fort from the south. The trooper had been sent on ahead the
+      day before, but his horse having met with a slight accident, he had been
+      delayed. He had seen the party, however, a long distance back in the early
+      morning. He must now ride away and meet Mrs. Lepage, he said. He was
+      furnished with a fresh horse, and he left, bearing a message from Lepage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hume decided to leave Fort Edmonton at once, and to take all the White
+      Guard back with him; and gave orders to that effect. Entering the room
+      where Lepage sat alone, he said: &ldquo;Lepage, the time has come for good-bye.
+      I am starting for Fort Providence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the other replied: &ldquo;You will wait until my wife comes. You must.&rdquo;
+       There was trouble in his voice. &ldquo;I must not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lepage braced himself for a heavy task and said: &ldquo;Hume, if the time has
+      come to say good-bye, it has also come when we should speak together for
+      once openly: to settle, in so far as can be done, a long account. You have
+      not let my wife know who saved me. That appears from her letters. She asks
+      the name of my rescuer. I have not yet told her. But she will know that
+      to-day when I tell her all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When you tell her all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I tell her all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you shall not do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will. It will be the beginning of the confession which I shall
+      afterwards make to the world.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Heaven you shall not do it. Do you want to wreck her life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jaspar Hume&rsquo;s face was wrathful, and remained so till the other sank back
+      in the chair with his forehead in his hands; but it softened as he saw
+      this remorse and shame. He began to see that Lepage had not clearly
+      grasped the whole situation. He said in quieter but still firm tones: &ldquo;No,
+      Lepage, that matter is between us two, and us alone. She must never know&mdash;the
+      world therefore must never know. You did an unmanly thing; you are
+      suffering a manly remorse. Now let it end here&mdash;but I swear it
+      shall,&rdquo; he said in sharp tones, as the other shook his head negatively: &ldquo;I
+      would have let you die at Manitou Mountain, if I had thought you would
+      dare to take away your wife&rsquo;s peace&mdash;your children&rsquo;s respect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have no children; our baby died.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hume softened again. &ldquo;Can you not see, Lepage? The thing cannot be mended.
+      I bury it all, and so must you. You will begin the world again, and so
+      shall I. Keep your wife&rsquo;s love. Henceforth you will deserve it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lepage raised moist eyes to the other and said: &ldquo;But you will take back
+      the money I got for that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a pause, then Hume replied: &ldquo;Yes, upon such terms, times, and
+      conditions as I shall hereafter fix. You have no child, Lepage?&rdquo; he gently
+      added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have no child; it died with my fame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hume looked steadily into the eyes of the man who had wronged him.
+      &ldquo;Remember, Lepage, you begin the world again. I am going now. By the
+      memory of old days, good-bye.&rdquo; He held out his hand. Lepage took it, rose
+      tremblingly to his feet, and said, &ldquo;You are a good man, Hume. Good-bye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sub-factor turned at the door. &ldquo;If it will please you, tell your wife
+      that I saved you. Some one will tell her; perhaps I would rather&mdash;at
+      least it would be more natural, if you did it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed out into the sunshine that streamed into the room and fell
+      across the figure of Lepage, who murmured dreamily: &ldquo;And begin the world
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Time passed. A shadow fell across the sunlight that streamed upon Lepage.
+      He looked up. There was a startled cry of joy, an answering exclamation of
+      love, and Rose was clasped in her husband&rsquo;s arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few moments afterwards the sweet-faced woman said: &ldquo;Who was that man who
+      rode away to the north as I came up, Clive? He reminded me of some one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was the leader of the White Guard, the man who saved me, Rose.&rdquo; He
+      paused a moment and then solemnly said: &ldquo;It was Jaspar Hume.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The wife came to her feet with a spring. &ldquo;He saved you&mdash;Jaspar Hume!
+      Oh, Clive!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He saved me, Rose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyes were wet: &ldquo;And he would not stay and let me thank him! Poor
+      fellow, poor Jaspar Hume! Has he been up here all these years?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her face was flushed, and pain was struggling with the joy she felt in
+      seeing her husband again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he has been here all the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then he has not succeeded in life, Clive!&rdquo; Her thoughts went back to the
+      days when, blind and ill, Hume went away for health&rsquo;s sake, and she
+      remembered how sorry then she felt for him, and how grieved she was that
+      when he came back strong and well, he did not come near her or her
+      husband, and offered no congratulations. She had not deliberately wronged
+      him. She knew he cared for her: but so did Lepage. A promise had been
+      given to neither when Jaspar Hume went away; and after that she grew to
+      love the successful, kind-mannered genius who became her husband. No real
+      pledge had been broken. Even in this happiness of hers, sitting once again
+      at her husband&rsquo;s feet, she thought with tender kindness of the man who had
+      cared for her eleven years ago; and who had but now saved her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has not succeeded in life,&rdquo; she repeated softly. Looking down at her,
+      his brow burning with a white heat, Lepage said: &ldquo;He is a great man,
+      Rose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sure he is a good man,&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps Lepage had borrowed some strength not all his own, for he said
+      almost sternly: &ldquo;He is a great man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife looked up half-startled and said: &ldquo;Very well, dear; he is a good
+      man&mdash;and a great man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sunlight still came in through the open door. The Saskatchewan flowed
+      swiftly between its verdant banks, an eagle went floating away to the
+      west, robins made vocal a solitary tree a few yards away, troopers moved
+      backwards and forwards across the square, and a hen and her chickens came
+      fluttering to the threshold. The wife looked at the yellow brood drawing
+      close to their mother, and her eyes grew wistful. She thought of their one
+      baby asleep in an English grave. But thinking of the words of the captain
+      of the White Guard, Lepage said firmly: &ldquo;We will begin the world again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled, and rose to kiss him as the hen and chickens hastened away
+      from the door, and a clear bugle call sounded in the square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Eleven years have gone since that scene was enacted at Edmonton.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      A great gathering is dispersing from a hall in Piccadilly. It has been
+      drawn together to do honour to a man who has achieved a triumph in
+      engineering science. As he steps from the platform to go, he is greeted by
+      a fusilade of cheers. He bows calmly and kindly. He is a man of vigorous
+      yet reserved aspect; he has a rare individuality. He receives with a quiet
+      cordiality the personal congratulations of his friends. He remains for
+      some time in conversation with a royal duke, who takes his arm, and with
+      him passes into the street. The duke is a member of this great man&rsquo;s club,
+      and offers him a seat in his brougham. Amid the cheers of the people they
+      drive away together. Inside the club there are fresh congratulations, and
+      it is proposed to arrange an impromptu dinner, at which the duke will
+      preside. But with modesty and honest thanks the great man declines. He
+      pleads an engagement. He had pleaded this engagement the day before to a
+      well-known society. After his health is proposed, he makes his adieux, and
+      leaving the club, walks away towards a West-end square. In one of its
+      streets he pauses, and enters a building called &ldquo;Providence Chambers.&rdquo; His
+      servant hands him a cablegram. He passes to his library, and, standing
+      before the fire, opens it. It reads: &ldquo;My wife and I send congratulations
+      to the great man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jaspar Hume stands for a moment looking at the fire, and then says simply:
+      &ldquo;I wish poor old Bouche were here.&rdquo; He then sits down and writes this
+      letter:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   My dear Friends,&mdash;Your cablegram has made me glad. The day is over.
+   My latest idea was more successful than I even dared to hope; and
+   the world has been kind. I went down to see your boy, Jaspar, at
+   Clifton last week. It was his birthday, you know&mdash;nine years old,
+   and a clever, strong-minded little fellow. He is quite contented.
+   As he is my god-child, I again claimed the right of putting a
+   thousand dollars to his credit in the bank,&mdash;I have to speak of
+   dollars to you people living in Canada&mdash;which I have done on his
+   every birthday. When he is twenty-one he will have twenty-one
+   thousand dollars&mdash;quite enough for a start in life. We get along
+   well together, and I think he will develop a fine faculty for
+   science. In the summer, as I said, I will bring him over to you.
+   There is nothing more to say to-night except that I am as always,
+
+          Your faithful and loving friend,
+                            JASPAR HUME.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A moment after the letter was finished, the servant entered and announced
+      &ldquo;Mr. Late Carscallen.&rdquo; With a smile and hearty greeting the great man and
+      this member of the White Guard met. It was to entertain his old arctic
+      comrade that Jaspar Hume had declined to be entertained by society or
+      club. A little while after, seated at the table, the ex-sub-factor said:
+      &ldquo;You found your brother well, Carscallen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The jaws moved slowly as of old. &ldquo;Ay, that, and a grand meenister, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wanted you to stay in Scotland, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, that, but there&rsquo;s no place for me like Fort Providence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try this pheasant. And you are sub-factor now, Carscallen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&rsquo;s two of us sub-factors&mdash;Jeff Hyde and myself. Mr. Field is
+      old, and can&rsquo;t do much work, and trade&rsquo;s heavy now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know. I hear from the factor now and then. And Gaspe Toujours, what of
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He went away three years ago, and he said he&rsquo;d come back. He never did
+      though. Jeff Hyde believes he will. He says to me a hundred times,
+      &lsquo;Carscallen, he made the sign of the cross that he&rsquo;d come back from Saint
+      Gabrielle; and that&rsquo;s next to the Book with a papist. If he&rsquo;s alive he&rsquo;ll
+      come.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he will, Carscallen. And Cloud-in-the-Sky?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He&rsquo;s still there, and comes in and smokes with Jeff Hyde and me, as he
+      used to do with you; but he doesn&rsquo;t obey our orders as he did yours, sir.
+      He said to me when I left: &lsquo;You see Strong-back, tell him Cloud-in-the-Sky
+      good Injun&mdash;he never forget. How!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jaspar Hume raised his glass with smiling and thoughtful eyes: &ldquo;To
+      Cloud-in-the-Sky and all who never forget!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg&rsquo;s The March Of The White Guard, by Gilbert Parker
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+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
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+Project Gutenberg's The March Of The White Guard, by Gilbert Parker
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The March Of The White Guard
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Last Updated: March 13, 2009
+Release Date: October 18, 2006 [EBook #6223]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARCH OF THE WHITE GUARD ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MARCH OF THE WHITE GUARD
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+"Ask Mr. Hume to come here for a moment, Gosse," said Field, the chief
+factor, as he turned from the frosty window of his office at Fort
+Providence, one of the Hudson's Bay Company's posts. The servant,
+or more properly, Orderly-Sergeant Gosse, late of the Scots Guards,
+departed on his errand, glancing curiously at his master's face as he
+did so. The chief factor, as he turned round, unclasped his hands from
+behind him, took a few steps forward, then standing still in the centre
+of the room, read carefully through a letter which he had held in the
+fingers of his right hand for the last ten minutes as he scanned the
+wastes of snow stretching away beyond Great Slave Lake to the arctic
+circle. He meditated a moment, went back to the window, looked out
+again, shook his head negatively, and with a sigh, walked over to the
+huge fireplace. He stood thoughtfully considering the floor until the
+door opened and sub-factor Jaspar Hume entered.
+
+The factor looked up and said: "Hume, I've something here that's been
+worrying me a bit. This letter came in the monthly batch this morning.
+It is from a woman. The company sends another commending the cause of
+the woman and urging us to do all that is possible to meet her wishes.
+It seems that her husband is a civil engineer of considerable fame. He
+had a commission to explore the Coppermine region and a portion of the
+Barren Grounds. He was to be gone six months. He has been gone a
+year. He left Fort Good Hope, skirted Great Bear Lake, and reached the
+Coppermine River. Then he sent back all of the Indians who accompanied
+him but two, they bearing the message that he would make the Great Fish
+River and come down by Great Slave Lake to Fort Providence. That was
+nine months ago. He has not come here, nor to any other of the forts,
+so far as is known, nor has any word been received from him. His wife,
+backed by the H.B.C., urges that a relief party be sent to look for him.
+They and she forget that this is the arctic region, and that the task is
+a well-nigh hopeless one. He ought to have been here six months ago. Now
+how can we do anything? Our fort is small, and there is always danger of
+trouble with the Indians. We can't force men to join a relief party like
+this, and who will volunteer? Who would lead such a party and who will
+make up the party to be led?"
+
+The brown face of Jaspar Hume was not mobile. It changed in expression
+but seldom; it preserved a steady and satisfying character of
+intelligence and force. The eyes, however, were of an inquiring,
+debating kind, that moved from one thing to another as if to get a
+sense of balance before opinion or judgment was expressed. The face
+had remained impassive, but the eyes had kindled a little as the factor
+talked. To the factor's despairing question there was not an immediate
+reply. The eyes were debating. But they suddenly steadied and Jaspar
+Hume said sententiously: "A relief party should go."
+
+"Yes, yes, but who is to lead them?"
+
+Again the eyes debated.
+
+"Read her letter," said the factor, handing it over. Jaspar Hume took it
+and mechanically scanned it. The factor had moved towards the table
+for his pipe or he would have seen the other start, and his nostrils
+slightly quiver, as his eyes grew conscious of what they were seeing.
+Turning quickly, Hume walked towards the window as though for more
+light, and with his back to the factor he read the letter. Then he
+turned and said: "I think this thing should be done."
+
+The factor shrugged his shoulders slightly. "Well, as to that, I think
+so too, but thinking and doing are two different things, Hume."
+
+"Will you leave the matter in my hands until the morning?"
+
+"Yes, of course, and glad to do so. You are the only man who can arrange
+the affair, if it is to be done at all. But I tell you, as you know,
+that everything will depend upon a leader, even if you secure the
+men.... So you had better keep the letter for to-night. It may help you
+to get the men together. A woman's handwriting will do more than a man's
+word any time."
+
+Jaspar Hume's eyes had been looking at the factor, but they were
+studying something else. His face seemed not quite so fresh as it was a
+few minutes before.
+
+"I will see you at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, Mr. Field," he said
+quietly. "Will you let Gosse come to me in an hour?"
+
+"Certainly. Good-night."
+
+Jaspar Hume let himself out. He walked across a small square to a log
+house and opened a door which creaked and shrieked with the frost. A dog
+sprang upon him as he did so, and rubbed its head against his breast. He
+touched the head as if it had been that of a child, and said: "Lie down,
+Bouche."
+
+It did so, but it watched him as he doffed his dogskin cap and buffalo
+coat. He looked round the room slowly once as though he wished to fix
+it clearly and deeply in his mind. Then he sat down and held near the
+firelight the letter the factor had given him. His features grew stern
+and set as he read it. Once he paused in the reading and looked into the
+fire, drawing his breath sharply between his teeth. Then he read it to
+the end without a sign. A pause, and he said aloud: "So this is how the
+lines meet again, Varre Lepage!" He read the last sentence of the letter
+aloud:
+
+   In the hope that you may soon give me good news of my husband,
+   I am, with all respect,
+
+               Faithfully yours,
+
+                       ROSE LEPAGE.
+
+Again he repeated: "With all respect, faithfully yours, Rose Lepage."
+
+The dog Bouche looked up. Perhaps it detected something unusual in
+the voice. It rose, came over, and laid its head on its master's knee.
+Hume's hand fell gently on the head, and he said to the fire: "Ah, Rose
+Lepage, you can write to Factor Field what you dare not write to your
+husband if you knew. You might say to him then, 'With all love,' but not
+'With all respect.'"
+
+He folded the letter and put it in his pocket. Then he took the dog's
+head between his hands and said: "Listen, Bouche, and I will tell you a
+story." The dog blinked, and pushed its nose against his arm.
+
+"Ten years ago two young men who had studied and graduated together at
+the same college were struggling together in their profession as civil
+engineers. One was Clive Lepage and the other was Jaspar Hume. The one
+was brilliant and persuasive, the other, persistent and studious. Lepage
+could have succeeded in any profession; Hume had only heart and mind for
+one.
+
+"Only for one, Bouche, you understand. He lived in it, he loved it, he
+saw great things to be achieved in it. He had got an idea. He worked at
+it night and day, he thought it out, he developed it, he perfected it,
+he was ready to give it to the world. But he was seized with illness,
+became blind, and was ordered to a warm climate for a year. He left his
+idea, his invention, behind him--his complete idea. While he was gone
+his bosom friend stole his perfected idea--yes, stole it, and sold it
+for twenty thousand dollars. He was called a genius, a great inventor.
+And then he married her. You don't know her, Bouche. You never saw
+beautiful Rose Varcoe, who, liking two men, chose the one who was
+handsome and brilliant, and whom the world called a genius. Why didn't
+Jaspar Hume expose him, Bouche? Proof is not always easy, and then he
+had to think of her. One has to think of a woman in such a case, Bouche.
+Even a dog can see that."
+
+He was silent for a moment, and then he said: "Come, Bouche. You will
+keep secret what I show you."
+
+He went to a large box in the corner, unlocked it, and took out a model
+made of brass and copper and smooth but unpolished wood.
+
+"After ten years of banishment, Bouche, Hume has worked out another
+idea, you see. It should be worth ten times the other, and the world
+called the other the work of a genius, dog."
+
+Then he became silent, the animal watching him the while. It had seen
+him working at this model for many a day, but had never heard him talk
+so much at a time as he had done this last ten minutes. He was generally
+a silent man--decisive even to severity, careless carriers and shirking
+under-officers thought. Yet none could complain that he was unjust. He
+was simply straight-forward, and he had no sympathy with those who had
+not the same quality. He had carried a drunken Indian on his back for
+miles, and from a certain death by frost. He had, for want of a more
+convenient punishment, promptly knocked down Jeff Hyde, the sometime
+bully of the fort, for appropriating a bundle of furs belonging to a
+French half-breed, Gaspe Toujours. But he nursed Jeff Hyde through an
+attack of pneumonia, insisting at the same time that Gaspe Toujours
+should help him. The result of it all was that Jeff Hyde and Gaspe
+Toujours became constant allies. They both formulated their oaths by
+Jaspar Hume. The Indian, Cloud-in-the-Sky, though by word never thanking
+his rescuer, could not be induced to leave the fort, except on some
+mission with which Jaspar Hume was connected. He preferred living an
+undignified, un-Indian life, and earning food and shelter by coarsely
+labouring with his hands. He came at least twice a week to Hume's
+log house, and, sitting down silent and cross-legged before the fire,
+watched the sub-factor working at his drawings and calculations. Sitting
+so for perhaps an hour or more, and smoking all the time, he would rise,
+and with a grunt, which was answered by a kindly nod, would pass out as
+silently as he came.
+
+And now as Jaspar Hume stood looking at his "Idea," Cloud-in-the-Sky
+entered, let his blanket fall by the hearthstone and sat down upon it.
+If Hume saw him or heard him, he at least gave no sign at first. But he
+said at last in a low tone to the dog: "It is finished, Bouche; it is
+ready for the world."
+
+Then he put it back, locked the box, and turned towards Cloud-in-the-Sky
+and the fireplace. The Indian grunted; the other nodded with the
+debating look again dominant in his eyes. The Indian met the look with
+satisfaction. There was something in Jaspar Hume's habitual reticence
+and decisiveness in action which appealed more to Cloud-in-the-Sky than
+any freedom of speech could possibly have done.
+
+Hume sat down, handed the Indian a pipe and tobacco, and, with arms
+folded, watched the fire. For half an hour they sat so, white man,
+Indian, and dog. Then Hume rose, went to a cupboard, took out some
+sealing wax and matches, and in a moment melted wax was dropping upon
+the lock of the box containing his Idea. He had just finished this as
+Sergeant Gosse knocked at the door, and immediately afterwards entered
+the room.
+
+"Gosse," said the sub-factor, "find Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late
+Carscallen, and bring them here." Sergeant Gosse immediately
+departed upon this errand. Hume then turned to the Indian, and said
+"Cloud-in-the-Sky, I want you to go a long journey hereaway to the
+Barren Grounds. Have twelve dogs ready by nine to-morrow morning."
+
+Cloud-in-the-Sky shook his head thoughtfully, and then after a pause
+said: "Strong-back go too?" Strongback was his name for the sub-factor.
+But the other either did not or would not hear. The Indian, however,
+appeared satisfied, for he smoked harder afterwards, and grunted to
+himself many times. A few moments passed, and then Sergeant Gosse
+entered, followed by Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late Carscallen.
+Late Carscallen had got his name "Late" from having been called "The
+Late Mr. Carscallen" by the chief factor because of his slowness. Slow
+as he was, however, the stout Scotsman had more than once proved himself
+a man of rare merit according to Hume's ideas. He was, of course, the
+last to enter.
+
+The men grouped themselves about the fire, Late Carscallen getting the
+coldest corner. Each man drew his tobacco from his pocket, and, cutting
+it, waited for Hume to speak. His eyes were debating as they rested on
+the four. Then he took out Mrs. Lepage's letter, and, with the group
+looking at him, he read it aloud. When it was finished, Cloud-in-the-Sky
+gave a guttural assent, and Gaspe Toujours, looking at Jeff Hyde, said:
+"It is cold in the Barren Grounds. We shall need much tabac." These men
+could read without difficulty Hume's reason for summoning them. To Gaspe
+Toujours' remark Jeff Hyde nodded affirmatively, and then all looked
+at Late Carscallen. He opened his heavy jaws once or twice with an
+animal-like sound, and then he said, in a general kind of way:
+
+"To the Barren Grounds. But who leads?"
+
+Hume was writing on a slip of paper, and he did not reply. The faces of
+three of them showed just a shade of anxiety. They guessed who it would
+be, but they were not sure. Cloud-in-the-Sky, however, grunted at them,
+and raised the bowl of his pipe towards the subfactor. The anxiety then
+seemed to disappear.
+
+For ten minutes more they sat so, all silent. Then Hume rose, handed
+the slip of paper to Sergeant Gosse, and said: "Attend to that at once,
+Gosse. Examine the food and blankets closely."
+
+The five were left alone.
+
+Then Hume spoke: "Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, Late Carscallen, and
+Cloud-in-the-Sky, this man, alive or dead, is between here and the
+Barren Grounds. He must be found--for his wife's sake."
+
+He handed Jeff Hyde her letter. Jeff rubbed his fingers before he
+touched the delicate and perfumed missive. Its delicacy seemed to
+bewilder him. He said: in a rough but kindly way: "Hope to die if
+I don't," and passed it on to Gaspe Toujours, who did not find it
+necessary to speak. His comrade had answered for him. Late Carscallen
+held it inquisitively for a moment, and then his jaws opened and shut as
+if he were about to speak. But before he did so Hume said: "It is a long
+journey and a hard one. Those who go may never come back. But this man
+was working for his country, and he has got a wife--a good wife." He
+held up the letter. "Late Carscallen wants to know who will lead you.
+Can't you trust me? I will give you a leader that you will follow to the
+Barren Grounds. To-morrow you will know who he is. Are you satisfied?
+Will you do it?"
+
+The four rose, and Cloud-in-the-Sky nodded approvingly many times. Hume
+held out his hand. Each man shook it, Jeff Hyde first. Then he said:
+"Close up ranks for the H.B.C.!" (H.B.C. meaning, of course, Hudson's
+Bay Company.)
+
+With a good man to lead them, these four would have stormed, alone, the
+Heights of Balaklava.
+
+Once more Hume spoke. "Go to Gosse and get your outfits at nine
+to-morrow morning. Cloud-in-the-Sky, have your sleds at the store at
+eight o'clock, to be loaded. Then all meet me at 10.15 at the office of
+the chief factor. Good night."
+
+As they passed out into the semi-arctic night, Late Carscallen with
+an unreal obstinacy said: "Slow march to the Barren Grounds--but who
+leads?"
+
+Left alone Hume sat down to the pine table at one end of the room and
+after a short hesitation began to write. For hours he sat there, rising
+only to put wood on the fire. The result was three letters: the largest
+addressed to a famous society in London, one to a solicitor in Montreal,
+and one to Mr. Field, the chief factor. They were all sealed carefully.
+Then he rose, took out his knife, and went over to the box as if to
+break the red seal. He paused, however, sighed, and put the knife back
+again. As he did so he felt something touch his leg. It was the dog.
+
+Hume drew in a sharp breath and said: "It was all ready, Bouche; and in
+another six months I should have been in London with it. But it will go
+whether I go or not--whether I go or not, Bouche."
+
+The dog sprang up and put his head against his master's breast.
+
+"Good dog, good dog, it's all right, Bouche; however it goes, it's all
+right," said Hume.
+
+Then the dog lay down and watched his master until he drew the blankets
+to his chin, and sleep drew oblivion over a fighting soul.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+At ten o'clock next morning Jaspar Hume presented himself at the chief
+factor's office. He bore with him the letters he had written the night
+before.
+
+The factor said: "Well, Hume, I am glad to see you. That woman's letter
+was on my mind all night. Have you anything to propose? I suppose not,"
+he added despairingly, as he looked closely into the face of the other.
+"Yes, Mr. Field, I propose that the expedition start at noon to-day."
+
+"Start-at noon-to-day?"
+
+"In two hours."
+
+"Who are the party?"
+
+"Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, Late Carscallen, and Cloud-in-the-Sky."
+
+"Who leads them, Hume? Who leads?"
+
+"With your permission, I do."
+
+"You? But, man, consider the danger and--your invention!"
+
+"I have considered all. Here are three letters. If we do not come back
+in three months, you will please send this one, with the box in my room,
+to the address on the envelope. This is for a solicitor in Montreal,
+which you will also forward as soon as possible; and this last one
+is for yourself; but you will not open it until the three months have
+passed. Have I your permission to lead these men? They would not go
+without me."
+
+"I know that, I know that, Hume. I can't say no. Go, and good luck go
+with you."
+
+Here the manly old factor turned away his head. He knew that Hume had
+done right. He knew the possible sacrifice this man was making of all
+his hopes, of his very life; and his sound Scotch heart appreciated the
+act to the full. But he did not know all. He did not know that Jaspar
+Hume was starting to search for the man who had robbed him of youth and
+hope and genius and home.
+
+"Here is a letter that the wife has written to her husband on the chance
+of his getting it. You will take it with you, Hume. And the other she
+wrote to me--shall I keep it?" He held out his hand.
+
+"No, sir, I will keep it, if you will allow me. It is my commission, you
+know." The shadow of a smile hovered about Hume's lips.
+
+The factor smiled kindly as he replied: "Ah, yes, your
+commission--Captain Jaspar Hume of--of what?" Just then the door opened
+and there entered the four men who had sat before the sub-factor's fire
+the night before. They were dressed in white blanket costumes from head
+to foot, white woollen capotes covering the grey fur caps they wore.
+Jaspar Hume ran his eye over them and then answered the factor's
+question: "Of the White Guard, sir."
+
+"Good," was the reply. "Men, you are going on a relief expedition. There
+will be danger. You need a good leader. You have one in Captain Hume."
+
+Jeff Hyde shook his head at the others with a pleased I-told-you-so
+expression; Cloud-in-the-Sky grunted his deep approval; and Late
+Carscallen smacked his lips in a satisfied manner and rubbed his leg
+with a schoolboy sense of enjoyment. The factor continued: "In the name
+of the Hudson's Bay Company I will say that if you come back, having
+done your duty faithfully, you shall be well rewarded. And I believe you
+will come back, if it is in human power to do so."
+
+Here Jeff Hyde said: "It isn't for reward we're doin' it, Mr. Field, but
+because Mr. Hume wished it, because we believed he'd lead us; and for
+the lost fellow's wife. We wouldn't have said we'd do it, if it wasn't
+for him that's just called us the White Guard."
+
+Under the bronze of the sub-factor's face there spread a glow more
+red than brown, and he said simply: "Thank you, men"--for they had all
+nodded assent to Jeff Hyde's words--"come with me to the store. We will
+start at noon."
+
+At noon the White Guard stood in front of the store on which the British
+flag was hoisted with another beneath it bearing the magic letters,
+H.B.C.: magic, because they opened to the world regions that seemed
+destined never to know the touch of civilisation. The few inhabitants of
+the fort were gathered at the store; the dogs and loaded sleds were at
+the door. It wanted but two minutes to twelve when Hume came from his
+house, dressed also in the white blanket costume, and followed by his
+dog, Bouche. In a moment more he had placed Bouche at the head of the
+first team of dogs. They were to have their leader too. Punctually at
+noon, Hume shook hands with the factor, said a quick good-bye to the
+rest, called out a friendly "How!" to the Indians standing near, and
+to the sound of a hearty cheer, heartier perhaps because none had a
+confident hope that the five would come back, the march of the White
+Guard began.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+It was eighteen days after. In the shadow of a little island of pines,
+that lies in a shivering waste of ice and snow, the White Guard were
+camped. They were able to do this night what they had not done for
+days--dig a great grave of snow, and building a fire of pine wood
+at each end of this strange house, get protection and something like
+comfort. They sat silent close to the fires. Jaspar Hume was writing
+with numbed fingers. The extract that follows is taken from his diary.
+It tells that day's life, and so gives an idea of harder, sterner days
+that they had spent and must yet spend, on this weary journey.
+
+   December 25th.--This is Christmas Day and Camp twenty-seven. We
+   have marched only five miles to-day. We are eighty miles from Great
+   Fish River, and the worst yet to do. We have discovered no signs.
+   Jeff Hyde has had a bad two days with his frozen foot. Gaspe
+   Toujours helps him nobly. One of the dogs died this morning.
+   Bouche is a great leader. This night's shelter is a god-send.
+   Cloud-in-the-Sky has a plan whereby some of us will sleep well. We
+   are in latitude 63deg 47' and longitude 112deg 32' 14". Have worked
+   out lunar observations. Have marked a tree JH/27 and raised cairn
+   No. 3.
+
+   We are able to celebrate Christmas Day with a good basin of tea and
+   our stand-by of beans cooked in fat. I was right about them: they
+   have great sustaining power. To-morrow we will start at ten
+   o'clock.
+
+The writing done, Jaspar Hume put his book away and turned towards the
+rest. Cloud-in-the-Sky and Late Carscallen were smoking. Little could be
+seen of their faces; they were snuffled to the eyes. Gaspe Toujours was
+drinking a basin of tea, and Jeff Hyde was fitfully dozing by the fire.
+The dogs were above in the tent--all but Bouche, who was permitted to be
+near his master. Presently the sub-factor rose, took from a knapsack a
+small tin pail, and put it near the fire. Then he took five little cups
+that fitted snugly into each other, separated them, and put them also
+near the fire. None of the party spoke. A change seemed to pass over the
+faces of all except Cloud-in-the-Sky. He smoked on unmoved. At length
+Hume spoke cheerily: "Now, men, before we turn in we'll do something in
+honour of the day. Liquor we none of us have touched since we started;
+but back there in the fort, and maybe in other places too, they will
+be thinking of us; so we'll drink a health to them, though it's but a
+spoonful, and to the day when we see them again!"
+
+The cups were passed round. The sub-factor measured out a very small
+portion to each. They were not men of uncommon sentiment; their lives
+were rigid and isolated and severe. Fireside comforts under fortunate
+conditions they saw but seldom, and they were not given to
+expressing their feelings demonstratively. But each man then, save
+Cloud-in-the-Sky, had some memory worth a resurrection.
+
+Jaspar Hume raised his cup; the rest followed his example. "To absent
+friends and the day when we see them again!" he said; and they all
+drank. Gaspe Toujours drank solemnly, and, as though no one was near,
+made the sign of the cross; for his memory was with a dark-eyed,
+soft-cheeked habitant girl of the parish of Saint Gabrielle, whom he had
+left behind seven years before, and had never seen since. Word had come
+from the parish priest that she was dying, and though he wrote back in
+his homely patois of his grief, and begged that the good father would
+write again, no word had ever come. He thought of her now as one for
+whom the candles had been lighted and masses had been said.
+
+But Jeff Hyde's eyes were bright, and suffering as he was, the heart in
+him was brave and hopeful. He was thinking of a glorious Christmas Day
+upon the Madawaska River three years agone; of Adam Henry, the blind
+fiddler; of bright, warm-hearted Pattie Chown, the belle of the ball,
+and the long drive home in the frosty night.
+
+Late Carscallen was thinking of a brother whom he had heard preach his
+first sermon in Edinburgh twenty years before. And Late Carscallen, slow
+of speech and thought, had been full of pride and love of that brilliant
+brother. In the natural course of things, they had drifted apart, the
+slow and uncouth one to make his home at last in the Far North, and to
+be this night on his way to the Barren Grounds. But as he stood with the
+cup to his lips he recalled the words of a newspaper paragraph of a
+few months before. It stated that "the Reverend James Carscallen,
+D.D., preached before Her Majesty on Whitsunday, and had the honour of
+lunching with Her Majesty afterwards." Remembering that, Late Carscallen
+rubbed his left hand joyfully against his blanketed leg and drank.
+
+Cloud-in-the-Sky's thoughts were with the present, and his "Ugh!" of
+approval was one of the senses purely. Instead of drinking to absent
+friends he looked at the sub-factor and said: "How!" He drank to the
+subfactor.
+
+Jaspar Hume had a memory of childhood; of a house beside a swift-flowing
+river, where a gentle widowed mother braced her heart against misfortune
+and denied herself and slaved that her son might be educated. He had
+said to her that some day he would be a great man, and she would be paid
+back a hundredfold. And he had worked hard at school, very hard. But one
+cold day of spring a message came to the school, and he sped homewards
+to the house beside the dark river down which the ice was floating,--he
+would remember that floating ice to his last day, and entered a quiet
+room where a white-faced woman was breathing away her life. And he fell
+at her side and kissed her hand and called to her; and she waked for a
+moment only and smiled on him, and said: "Be good, my boy, and God
+will make you great." Then she said she was cold, and some one felt
+her feet--a kind old soul who shook her head sadly at him; and a voice,
+rising out of a strange smiling languor, murmured: "I'll away, I'll away
+to the Promised Land--to the Promised Land.... It is cold--so cold--God
+keep my boy!" Then the voice ceased, and the kind old soul who had
+looked at him, pityingly folded her arms about him, and drawing his
+brown head to her breast, kissed him with flowing eyes and whispered:
+"Come away, laddie, come away."
+
+But he came back in the night and sat beside her, and remained there
+till the sun grew bright, and then through another day and night,
+until they bore her out of the little house by the river to the frozen
+hill-side.
+
+Sitting here in this winter desolation Jaspar Hume once more beheld
+these scenes of twenty years before and followed himself, a poor
+dispensing clerk in a doctor's office, working for that dream of
+achievement in which his mother believed; for which she hoped. And
+following further the boy that was himself, he saw a friendless
+first-year man at college, soon, however, to make a friend of Clive
+Lepage, and to see always the best of that friend, being himself so
+true. At last the day came when they both graduated together in science,
+a bright and happy day, succeeded by one still brighter, when they both
+entered a great firm as junior partners. Afterwards befell the meeting
+with Rose Varcoe; and he thought of how he praised his friend Lepage
+to her, and brought him to be introduced to her. He recalled all those
+visions that came to him when, his professional triumphs achieved, he
+should have a happy home, and happy faces by his fireside. And the face
+was to be that of Rose Varcoe, and the others, faces of those who should
+be like her and like himself. He saw, or rather felt, that face clouded
+and anxious when he went away ill and blind for health's sake. He did
+not write to her. The doctors forbade him that. He did not ask her to
+write, for his was so steadfast a nature that he did not need letters
+to keep him true; and he thought she must be the same. He did not
+understand a woman's heart, how it needs remembrances, and needs to give
+remembrances.
+
+Hume's face in the light of this fire seemed calm and cold, yet behind
+it was an agony of memory--the memory of the day when he discovered that
+Lepage was married to Rose, and that the trusted friend had grown famous
+and well-to-do on the offspring of his brain. His first thought had been
+one of fierce determination to expose this man who had falsified all
+trust. But then came the thought of the girl, and, most of all, there
+came the words of his dying mother, "Be good, my boy, and God will make
+you great"; and for his mother's sake he had compassion on the girl, and
+sought no restitution from her husband. And now, ten years later, he
+did not regret that he had stayed his hand. The world had ceased to call
+Lepage a genius. He had not fulfilled the hope once held of him. Hume
+knew this from occasional references in scientific journals.
+
+And now he was making this journey to save, if he could, Lepage's life.
+Though just on the verge of a new era in his career--to give to the
+world the fruit of ten years' thought and labour, he had set all behind
+him, that he might be true to the friendship of his youth, that he might
+be clear of the strokes of conscience to the last hour of his life.
+
+Looking round him now, the debating look came again into his eyes. He
+placed his hand in his breast, and let it rest there for a moment. The
+look became certain and steady, the hand was drawn out, and in it was a
+Book of Common Prayer. Upon the fly-leaf was written: "Jane Hume, to her
+dear son Jaspar, on his twelfth birthday."
+
+These men of the White Guard were not used to religious practices,
+whatever their past had been in that regard, and at any other time they
+might have been surprised at this action of their leader. Under some
+circumstances it might have lessened their opinion of him; but his
+influence over them now was complete. They knew they were getting nearer
+to him than they had ever done; even Cloud-in-the-Sky appreciated that.
+Hume spoke no word to them, but looked at them and stood up. They all
+did the same, Jeff Hyde leaning on the shoulders of Gaspe Toujours. He
+read first, four verses of the Thirty-first Psalm, then followed the
+prayer of St. Chrysostom, and the beautiful collect which appeals to the
+Almighty to mercifully look upon the infirmities of men, and to stretch
+forth His hand to keep and defend them in all dangers and necessities.
+Late Carscallen, after a long pause, said "Amen," and Jeff said in a
+whisper to Gaspe Toujours: "That's to the point. Infirmities and dangers
+and necessities is what troubles us."
+
+Immediately after, at a sign from the sub-factor, Cloud-in-the-Sky began
+to transfer the burning wood from one fire to the other until only hot
+ashes were left where a great blaze had been. Over these ashes pine
+twigs and branches were spread, and over them again blankets. The word
+was then given to turn in, and Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late
+Carscallen lay down in this comfortable bed. Each wished to give way to
+their captain, but he would not consent. He and Cloud-in-the-Sky wrapped
+themselves in their blankets like mummies, covering the head completely,
+and under the arctic sky they slept alone in an austere and tenantless
+world. They never know how loftily sardonic Nature can be who have not
+seen that land where the mercury freezes in the tubes, and there is
+light but no warmth in the smile of the sun. Not Sturt in the heart
+of Australia with the mercury bursting the fevered tubes, with the
+finger-nails breaking like brittle glass, with the ink drying instantly
+on the pen, with the hair fading and falling off, would, if he could,
+have exchanged his lot for that of the White Guard. They were in a
+frozen endlessness that stretched away to a world where never voice of
+man or clip of wing or tread of animal is heard. It is the threshold to
+the undiscovered country, to that untouched north whose fields of white
+are only furrowed by the giant forces of the elements; on whose frigid
+hearthstone no fire is ever lit; where the electric phantoms of a
+nightless land pass and repass, and are never still; where the magic
+needle points not towards the north but darkly downward; where the sun
+never stretches warm hands to him who dares confront the terrors of
+eternal snow.
+
+The White Guard slept.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"No, Captain; leave me here and push on to Manitou Mountain. You ought
+to make it in two days. I'm just as safe here as on the sleds, and less
+trouble. A blind man's no good. I'll have a good rest while you're gone,
+and then perhaps my eyes will come out right. My foot's nearly well
+now."
+
+Jeff Hyde was snow-blind. The giant of the party had suffered most.
+
+But Hume said in reply: "I won't leave you alone. The dogs can carry you
+as they've done for the last ten days."
+
+But Jeff replied: "I'm as safe here as marching, and safer. When the
+dogs are not carrying me, nor any one leading me, you can get on faster;
+and that means everything to us, now don't it?"
+
+Hume met the eyes of Gaspe Toujours. He read them. Then he said to Jeff:
+"It shall be as you wish. Late Carscallen, Cloud-in-the-Sky, and myself
+will push on to Manitou Mountain. You and Gaspe Toujours will remain
+here."
+
+Jeff Hyde's blind eyes turned towards Gaspe Toujours, who said: "Yes. We
+have plenty tabac."
+
+A tent was set up, provisions were put in it, a spirit-lamp and matches
+were added, and the simple menage was complete. Not quite. Jaspar Hume
+looked round. There was not a tree in sight. He stooped and cut away a
+pole that was used for strengthening the runners of the sleds, fastened
+it firmly in the ground, and tied to it a red woollen scarf, used for
+tightening his white blankets round him. Then he said: "Be sure and keep
+that flying."
+
+Jeff's face was turned towards the north. The blindman's instinct
+was coming to him. Far off white eddying drifts were rising over long
+hillocks of snow. When he turned round again his face was troubled. It
+grew more troubled, then it brightened up again, and he said to Hume:
+"Captain, would you leave that book with me till you come back--that
+about infirmities, dangers, and necessities? I knew a river-boss who
+used to carry an old spelling-book round with him for luck. It seems to
+me as if that book of yours, Captain, would bring luck to this part of
+the White Guard, that bein' out at heels like has to stay behind."
+
+Hume had borne the sufferings of his life with courage; he had led this
+terrible tramp with no tremor at his heart for himself; he was seeking
+to perform a perilous act without any inward shrinking; but Jeff's
+request was the greatest trial of this critical period in his life.
+
+Jeff felt, if he could not see, the hesitation of his chief. His rough
+but kind instincts told him something was wrong, and he hastened to add:
+"Beg your pardon, Mr. Hume, it ain't no matter. I oughtn't have asked
+you for it. But it's just like me. I've been a chain on the leg of the
+White Guard this whole tramp."
+
+The moment of hesitation had passed before Jeff had said half-a-dozen
+words, and Hume put the book in his hands with the words: "No, Jeff,
+take it. It will bring luck to the White Guard. Keep it safe until I
+come back."
+
+Jeff took the book, but hearing a guttural "Ugh" behind him, he turned
+round defiantly. Cloud-in-the-Sky touched his arm and said: "Good!
+Strong-back book--good!" Jeff was satisfied.
+
+At this point they parted, Jeff and Gaspe Toujours remaining, and Hume
+and his two followers going on towards Manitou Mountain. There seemed
+little probability that Clive Lepage would be found. In their progress
+eastward and northward they had covered wide areas of country, dividing
+and meeting again after stated hours of travel, but not a sign had been
+seen; neither cairn nor staff nor any mark of human presence.
+
+Hume had noticed Jeff Hyde's face when it was turned to the eddying
+drifts of the north, and he understood what was in the experienced
+huntsman's mind. He knew that severe weather was before them, and that
+the greatest danger of the journey was to be encountered.
+
+That night they saw Manitou Mountain, cold, colossal, harshly calm; and
+jointly with that sight there arose a shrieking, biting, fearful
+north wind. It blew upon them in cruel menace of conquest, in piercing
+inclemency. It struck a freezing terror to their hearts, and grew in
+violent attack until, as if repenting that it had foregone its power to
+save, the sun suddenly grew red and angry, and spread out a shield of
+blood along the bastions of the west. The wind shrank back and grew less
+murderous, and ere the last red arrow shot up behind the lonely western
+wall of white, the three knew that the worst of the storm had passed and
+that death had drawn back for a time. What Hume thought may be gathered
+from his diary; for ere he crawled in among the dogs and stretched
+himself out beside Bouche, he wrote these words with aching fingers:
+
+   January 10th: Camp 39.--A bitter day. We are facing three fears
+   now: the fate of those we left behind; Lepage's fate; and the going
+   back. We are twenty miles from Manitou Mountain. If he is found,
+   I should not fear the return journey; success gives hope. But we
+   trust in God.
+
+Another day passed and at night, after a hard march, they camped five
+miles from Manitou Mountain. And not a sign! But Hume felt there was a
+faint chance of Lepage being found at this mountain. His iron frame had
+borne the hardships of this journey well; his strong heart better. But
+this night an unaccountable weakness possessed him. Mind and body were
+on the verge of helplessness. Bouche seemed to understand this, and when
+he was unhitched from the team of dogs, now dwindled to seven, he leaped
+upon his master's breast. It was as if some instinct of sympathy, of
+prescience, was passing between the man and the dog. Hume bent his head
+down to Bouche for an instant and rubbed his side kindly; then he said,
+with a tired accent: "It's all right, old dog, it's all right."
+
+Hume did not sleep well at first, but at length oblivion came. He waked
+to feel Bouche tugging at his blankets. It was noon. Late Carscallen and
+Cloud-in-the-Sky were still sleeping--inanimate bundles among the dogs.
+In an hour they were on their way again, and towards sunset they had
+reached the foot of Manitou Mountain. Abruptly from the plain rose this
+mighty mound, blue and white upon a black base. A few straggling pines
+grew near its foot, defying latitude, as the mountain itself defied
+the calculations of geographers and geologists. A halt was called.
+Late Carscallen and Cloud-in-the-Sky looked at the chief. His eyes were
+scanning the mountain closely. Suddenly he motioned. A hundred feet up
+there was a great round hole in the solid rock, and from this hole there
+came a feeble cloud of smoke! The other two saw also. Cloud-in-the-Sky
+gave a wild whoop, and from the mountain there came, a moment after, a
+faint replica of the sound. It was not an echo, for there appeared at
+the mouth of the cave an Indian, who made feeble signs for them to
+come. In a little while they were at the cave. As Jaspar Hume entered,
+Cloud-in-the-Sky and the stalwart but emaciated Indian who had beckoned
+to them spoke to each other in the Chinook language, the jargon common
+to all Indians of the West.
+
+Jaspar Hume saw a form reclining on a great bundle of pine branches,
+and he knew what Rose Lepage had prayed for was come to pass. By the
+flickering light of a handful of fire he saw Lepage--rather what was
+left of him--a shadow of energy, a heap of nerveless bones. His eyes
+were shut, but as Hume, with a quiver of memory and sympathy at his
+heart, stood for an instant, and looked at the man whom he had cherished
+as a friend and found an enemy, Lepage's lips moved and a weak voice
+said: "Who is there?"
+
+"A friend."
+
+"Come-near-me,--friend."
+
+Hume made a motion to Late Carscallen, who was heating some liquor at
+the fire, and then he stooped and lifted up the sick man's head, and
+took his hand. "You have come--to save me!" whispered the weak voice
+again.
+
+"Yes; I've come to save you." This voice was strong and clear and true.
+
+"I seem--to have--heard--your voice before--somewhere before--I seem
+to--have--"
+
+But he had fainted.
+
+Hume poured a little liquor down the sick man's throat, and Late
+Carscallen chafed the delicate hand--delicate in health, it was like
+that of a little child now. When breath came again Hume whispered to his
+helper "Take Cloud-in-the-Sky and get wood; bring fresh branches. Then
+clear one of the sleds, and we will start back with him in the early
+morning."
+
+Late Carscallen, looking at the skeleton-like figure, said: "He will
+never get there."
+
+"Yes, he will get there," was Hume's reply.
+
+"But he is dying."
+
+"He goes with me to Fort Providence."
+
+"Ay, to Providence he goes, but not with you," said Late Carscallen,
+doggedly.
+
+Anger flashed in Hume's eye, but he said quietly "Get the wood,
+Carscallen."
+
+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."
+
+"To take me--to her." Lepage shook his head sadly, but he pressed to his
+lips the letter that Hume had given him.
+
+"To take you to her, Lepage."
+
+"No, I shall never see her again."
+
+"I tell you, you shall. You can live if you will. You owe that to
+her--to me--to God."
+
+"To her--to you--to God. I have been true to none. I have been punished.
+I shall die here."
+
+"You shall go to Fort Providence. Do that in payment of your debt to me,
+Lepage. I demand that." In this transgressor there was a latent spark
+of honour, a sense of justice that might have been developed to great
+causes, if some strong nature, seeing his weaknesses, had not condoned
+them, but had appealed to the natural chivalry of an impressionable,
+vain, and weak character. He struggled to meet Hume's eyes, and doing
+so, he gained confidence and said: "I will try to live. I will do you
+justice--yet."
+
+"Your first duty is to eat and drink. We start for Fort Providence
+to-morrow."
+
+The sick man stretched out his hand. "Food! Food!" he said.
+
+In tiny portions food and drink were given to him, and his strength
+sensibly increased. The cave was soon aglow with the fire kindled by
+Late Carscallen and Cloud-in-the-Sky. There was little speaking, for
+the sick man soon fell asleep. Lepage's Indian told Cloud-in-the-Sky
+the tale of their march--how the other Indian and the dogs died; how
+his master became ill as they were starting towards Fort Providence from
+Manitou Mountain in the summer weather; how they turned back and took
+refuge in this cave; how month by month they had lived on what would
+hardly keep a rabbit alive; and how, at last, his master urged him to
+press on with his papers; but he would not, and stayed until this day,
+when the last bit of food had been eaten, and they were found.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The next morning Lepage was placed upon a sled, and they started back,
+Bouche barking joyfully as he led off, with Cloud-in-the-Sky beside him.
+There was light in the faces of all, though the light could not be seen
+by reason of their being muffled so. All day they travelled, scarcely
+halting, Lepage's Indian marching well. Often the corpse-like bundle on
+the sled was disturbed, and biscuits wet in brandy and bits of preserved
+venison were given.
+
+That night Hume said to Late Carscallen: "I am going to start at the
+first light of the morning to get to Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde as
+soon as possible. Follow as fast as you can. He will be safe, if you
+give him food and drink often. I shall get to the place where we left
+them about noon; you should reach there at night or early the next
+morning."
+
+"Hadn't you better take Bouche with you?" said Late Carscallen.
+
+The sub-factor thought a moment, and then said: "No, he is needed most
+where he is."
+
+At noon the next day Jaspar Hume looked round upon a billowy plain of
+sun and ice, but saw no staff, no signal, no tent, no sign of human
+life: of Gaspe Toujours or of Jeff Hyde. His strong heart quailed. Had
+he lost his way? He looked at the sun. He was not sure. He consulted his
+compass, but it quivered hesitatingly. For awhile that wild bewilderment
+which seizes upon the minds of the strongest, when lost, mastered
+him, in spite of his struggles against it. He moved in a maze of
+half-blindness, half-delirium. He was lost in it, swayed by it. He began
+to wander about; and there grew upon his senses strange delights and
+reeling agonies. He heard church bells, he caught at butterflies, he
+tumbled in new-mown hay, he wandered in a tropic garden. But in the hay
+a wasp stung him, and the butterfly changed to a curling black snake
+that struck at him and glided to a dark-flowing river full of floating
+ice, and up from the river a white hand was thrust, and it beckoned
+him--beckoned him. He shut his eyes and moved towards it, but a voice
+stopped him, and it said, "Come away, come away," and two arms folded
+him round, and as he went back from the shore he stumbled and fell,
+and... What is this? A yielding mass at his feet--a mass that stirs! He
+clutches at it, he tears away the snow, he calls aloud--and his voice
+has a faraway unnatural sound--"Gaspe Toujours! Gaspe Toujours!" Then
+the figure of a man shakes itself in the snow, and a voice says: "Ay,
+ay, sir!" Yes, it is Gaspe Toujours! And beside him lies Jeff Hyde, and
+alive. "Ay, ay, sir, alive!"
+
+Jaspar Hume's mind was itself again. It had but suffered for a moment
+the agony of delirium.
+
+Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde had lain down in the tent the night of
+the great wind, and had gone to sleep at once. The staff had been blown
+down, the tent had fallen over them, the drift had covered them, and for
+three days they had slept beneath the snow, never waking.
+
+Jeff Hyde's sight was come again to him. "You've come back for the
+book," he said. "You couldn't go on without it. You ought to have taken
+it yesterday."
+
+He drew it from his pocket. He was dazed.
+
+"No, Jeff, I've not come back for that, and I did not leave you
+yesterday: it is three days and more since we parted. The book has
+brought us luck, and the best. We have found our man; and they'll be
+here to-night with him. I came on ahead to see how you fared."
+
+In that frost-bitten world Jeff Hyde uncovered his head for a moment.
+"Gaspe Toujours is a papist," he said, "but he read me some of that book
+the day you left, and one thing we went to sleep on: it was that about
+'Lightenin' the darkness, and defendin' us from all the perils and
+dangers of this night.'" Here Gaspe Toujours made the sign of the cross.
+Jeff Hyde continued half apologetically for his comrade: "That comes
+natural to Gaspe Toujours--I guess it always does to papists. But I
+never had any trainin' that way, and I had to turn the thing over and
+over, and I fell asleep on it. And when I wake up three days after,
+here's my eyes as fresh as daisies, and you back, sir, and the thing
+done that we come to do."
+
+He put the Book into Hume's hands and at that moment Gaspe Toujours
+said: "See!" Far off, against the eastern horizon, appeared a group of
+moving figures.
+
+That night the broken segments of the White Guard were reunited, and
+Clive Lepage slept by the side of Jaspar Hume.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Napoleon might have marched back from Moscow with undecimated legions
+safely enough, if the heart of those legions had not been crushed. The
+White Guard, with their faces turned homeward, and the man they had
+sought for in their care, seemed to have acquired new strength. Through
+days of dreadful cold, through nights of appalling fierceness, through
+storm upon the plains that made for them paralysing coverlets, they
+marched. And if Lepage did not grow stronger, life at least was kept in
+him.
+
+There was little speech among them, but once in a while Gaspe Toujours
+sang snatches of the songs of the voyageurs of the great rivers; and
+the hearts of all were strong. Between Bouche and his master there was
+occasional demonstration. On the twentieth day homeward, Hume said with
+his hand on the dog's head "It had to be done, Bouche; even a dog could
+see that."
+
+And so it was "all right" for the White Guard. One day when the sun was
+warmer than usual over Fort Providence, and just sixty-five days since
+that cheer had gone up from apprehensive hearts for brave men going out
+into the Barren Grounds, Sergeant Gosse, who, every day, and of late
+many times a day, had swept the north-east with a field-glass, rushed
+into the chief-factor's office, and with a broken voice cried: "They've
+all come! They've come!" Then he leaned his arm and head against the
+wall and sobbed. And the old factor rose from his chair tremblingly, and
+said his thank-god, and went hurriedly into the square. He did not go
+steadily, however, the joyous news had shaken him, sturdy old pioneer
+as he was. A fringe of white had grown about his temples in the last
+two months. The people of the fort had said they had never seen him so
+irascible, yet so gentle; so uneasy, yet so reserved; so stern about the
+mouth, yet so kind about the eyes as he had been since Hume had gone on
+this desperate errand.
+
+Already the handful of people at the fort had gathered. Indians left
+the store, and joined the rest; the factor and Sergeant Gosse set out
+to meet the little army of relief. To the factor's "In the name of the
+Hudson's Bay Company, Mr. Hume," when they met there came "By the help
+of God, sir," and he pointed to the sled whereon Lepage lay. A feeble
+hand was clasped in the burly hand of the factor, and then they all fell
+into line again, Cloud-in-the-Sky running ahead of the dogs. Snow had
+fallen on them, and as they entered the stockade, men and dogs were
+white from head to foot.
+
+The White Guard had come back. Jaspar Hume as simply acknowledged his
+strident welcome as he had done the God-speed two months and more ago.
+With the factor he bore the sick man in, and laid him on his own bed.
+Then he came outside again, and when they cheered him once more, he
+said: "We have come safe through, and I'm thankful. But remember that my
+comrades in this march deserve your cheers more than I. Without them I
+couldn't have done anything."
+
+"In our infirmities and in all our dangers and necessities," added Jeff
+Hyde. "The luck of the world was in that book!"
+
+In another half-hour the White Guard was at ease, and four of them were
+gathered about the great stove in the store, Cloud-in-the-Sky smoking
+placidly, and full of guttural emphasis; Late Carscallen moving his
+animal-like jaws with a sense of satisfaction; Gaspe Toujours talking
+in Chinook to the Indians, in patois to the French clerk, and in broken
+English to them all; and Jeff Hyde exclaiming on the wonders of the
+march, the finding of Lepage at Manitou Mountain, and of himself and
+Gaspe Toujours buried in the snow.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+In Hume's house at midnight Lepage lay asleep with his wife's
+letters--received through the factor--in his hand. The firelight played
+upon a dark, disappointed face--a doomed, prematurely old face, as it
+seemed to the factor.
+
+"You knew him, then," the factor said, after a long silence, with a
+gesture towards the bed.
+
+"Yes, well, years ago," replied Hume.
+
+Just then the sick man stirred in his sleep, and he said disjointedly:
+"I'll make it all right to you, Hume." Then came a pause, and a quicker
+utterance: "Forgive--forgive me, Rose." The factor got up, and turned to
+go, and Hume, with a sorrowful gesture, went over to the bed.
+
+Again the voice said: "Ten years--I have repented ten years--I dare not
+speak--"
+
+The factor touched Hume's arm. "He has fever. You and I must nurse him,
+Hume. You can trust me--you understand."
+
+"Yes, I can trust you," was the reply. "But I can tell you nothing."
+
+"I do not want to know anything. If you can watch till two o'clock I
+will relieve you. I'll send the medicine chest over. You know how to
+treat him."
+
+The factor passed out, and the other was left alone with the man who had
+wronged him. The feeling most active in his mind was pity, and, as he
+prepared a draught from his own stock of medicines, he thought the past
+and the present all over. He knew that however much he had suffered,
+this man had suffered more. In this silent night there was broken
+down any barrier that may have stood between Lepage and his complete
+compassion. Having effaced himself from the calculation, justice became
+forgiveness.
+
+He moistened the sick man's lips, and bathed his forehead, and roused
+him once to take a quieting powder. Then he sat down and wrote to
+Rose Lepage. But he tore the letter up again and said to the dog: "No,
+Bouche, I can't; the factor must do it. She needn't know yet that it was
+I who saved him. It doesn't make any burden of gratitude, if my name is
+kept out of it. The factor mustn't mention me, Bouche--not yet. When he
+is well we will go to London with It, Bouche, and we needn't meet her.
+It will be all right, Bouche, all right!"
+
+The dog seemed to understand; for he went over to the box that held
+It; and looked at his master. Then Jaspar Hume rose, broke the seal,
+unlocked the box and opened it; but he heard the sick man moan, and he
+closed it again and went over to the bed. The feeble voice said: "I must
+speak--I cannot die so--not so." Hume moistened the lips once, put a
+cold cloth on the fevered head, and then sat down by the fire again.
+
+Lepage slept at last. The restless hands grew quiet, the breath became
+more regular, the tortured mind found a short peace. With the old
+debating look in his eyes, Hume sat there watching until the factor
+relieved him.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+February and March and April were past, and May was come. Lepage had
+had a hard struggle for life, but he had survived. For weeks every night
+there was a repetition of that first night after the return: delirious
+self-condemnation, entreaty, appeal to his wife, and Hume's name
+mentioned in shuddering remorse. With the help of the Indian who had
+shared the sick man's sufferings in the Barren Grounds, the factor and
+Hume nursed him back to life. After the first night no word had passed
+between the two watchers regarding the substance of Lepage's delirium.
+But one evening the factor was watching alone, and the repentant man
+from his feverish sleep cried out: "Hush, hush! don't let them know--I
+stole them both, and Rose did not know. Rose did not know!"
+
+The factor rose and walked away. The dog was watching him. He said to
+Bouche: "You have a good master, Bouche."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+In an arm-chair made of hickory and birch-bark by Cloud-in-the-Sky,
+Lepage sat reading a letter from his wife. She was at Winnipeg, and was
+coming west as far as Regina to meet him on his way down. He looked a
+wreck; but a handsome wreck. His refined features, his soft black beard
+and blue eyes, his graceful hand and gentle manners, seemed not to
+belong to an evil-hearted man. He sat in the sunlight at the door,
+wrapped about in moose and beaver skins. The world of plain and wood
+was glad. Not so Lepage. He sat and thought of what was to come. He had
+hoped at times that he would die, but twice Hume had said: "I demand
+your life. You owe it to your wife--to me." He had pulled his heart up
+to this demand and had lived. But what lay before him? He saw a stony
+track, and he shuddered.
+
+As he sat there facing the future, Hume came to him and said: "If you
+feel up to it, Lepage, we will start for Edmonton on Monday. I think it
+will be quite safe, and your wife is anxious. I shall accompany you as
+far as Edmonton; you can then proceed by easy stages, in this pleasant
+weather. Are you ready to go?"
+
+"Quite ready," was the reply.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+On a beautiful May evening Lepage, Hume, and the White Guard were
+welcomed at Fort Edmonton by the officer in command of the Mounted
+Police. They were to enjoy the hospitality of the fort for a couple of
+days. Hume was to go back with Cloud-in-the-Sky and Late Carscallen,
+and a number of Indian carriers; for this was a journey of business too.
+Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde were to press on with Lepage, who was now
+much stronger and better. One day passed, and on the following morning
+Hume gave instructions to Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde, and made
+preparations for his going back. He was standing in the Barracks Square,
+when a horseman rode in and made inquiry of a sergeant standing near,
+if Lepage had arrived at the fort. A few words brought out the fact that
+Rose Lepage was nearing the fort from the south. The trooper had been
+sent on ahead the day before, but his horse having met with a slight
+accident, he had been delayed. He had seen the party, however, a long
+distance back in the early morning. He must now ride away and meet
+Mrs. Lepage, he said. He was furnished with a fresh horse, and he left,
+bearing a message from Lepage.
+
+Hume decided to leave Fort Edmonton at once, and to take all the White
+Guard back with him; and gave orders to that effect. Entering the
+room where Lepage sat alone, he said: "Lepage, the time has come for
+good-bye. I am starting for Fort Providence."
+
+But the other replied: "You will wait until my wife comes. You must."
+There was trouble in his voice. "I must not."
+
+Lepage braced himself for a heavy task and said: "Hume, if the time has
+come to say good-bye, it has also come when we should speak together for
+once openly: to settle, in so far as can be done, a long account. You
+have not let my wife know who saved me. That appears from her letters.
+She asks the name of my rescuer. I have not yet told her. But she will
+know that to-day when I tell her all."
+
+"When you tell her all?"
+
+"When I tell her all."
+
+"But you shall not do that."
+
+"I will. It will be the beginning of the confession which I shall
+afterwards make to the world."
+
+"By Heaven you shall not do it. Do you want to wreck her life?"
+
+Jaspar Hume's face was wrathful, and remained so till the other sank
+back in the chair with his forehead in his hands; but it softened as he
+saw this remorse and shame. He began to see that Lepage had not clearly
+grasped the whole situation. He said in quieter but still firm tones:
+"No, Lepage, that matter is between us two, and us alone. She must never
+know--the world therefore must never know. You did an unmanly thing;
+you are suffering a manly remorse. Now let it end here--but I swear it
+shall," he said in sharp tones, as the other shook his head negatively:
+"I would have let you die at Manitou Mountain, if I had thought you
+would dare to take away your wife's peace--your children's respect."
+
+"I have no children; our baby died."
+
+Hume softened again. "Can you not see, Lepage? The thing cannot be
+mended. I bury it all, and so must you. You will begin the world again,
+and so shall I. Keep your wife's love. Henceforth you will deserve it."
+
+Lepage raised moist eyes to the other and said: "But you will take back
+the money I got for that?"
+
+There was a pause, then Hume replied: "Yes, upon such terms, times,
+and conditions as I shall hereafter fix. You have no child, Lepage?" he
+gently added.
+
+"We have no child; it died with my fame."
+
+Hume looked steadily into the eyes of the man who had wronged him.
+"Remember, Lepage, you begin the world again. I am going now. By the
+memory of old days, good-bye." He held out his hand. Lepage took it,
+rose tremblingly to his feet, and said, "You are a good man, Hume.
+Good-bye."
+
+The sub-factor turned at the door. "If it will please you, tell
+your wife that I saved you. Some one will tell her; perhaps I would
+rather--at least it would be more natural, if you did it."
+
+He passed out into the sunshine that streamed into the room and fell
+across the figure of Lepage, who murmured dreamily: "And begin the world
+again."
+
+Time passed. A shadow fell across the sunlight that streamed upon
+Lepage. He looked up. There was a startled cry of joy, an answering
+exclamation of love, and Rose was clasped in her husband's arms.
+
+A few moments afterwards the sweet-faced woman said: "Who was that man
+who rode away to the north as I came up, Clive? He reminded me of some
+one."
+
+"That was the leader of the White Guard, the man who saved me, Rose." He
+paused a moment and then solemnly said: "It was Jaspar Hume."
+
+The wife came to her feet with a spring. "He saved you--Jaspar Hume! Oh,
+Clive!"
+
+"He saved me, Rose."
+
+Her eyes were wet: "And he would not stay and let me thank him! Poor
+fellow, poor Jaspar Hume! Has he been up here all these years?"
+
+Her face was flushed, and pain was struggling with the joy she felt in
+seeing her husband again.
+
+"Yes, he has been here all the time."
+
+"Then he has not succeeded in life, Clive!" Her thoughts went back to
+the days when, blind and ill, Hume went away for health's sake, and she
+remembered how sorry then she felt for him, and how grieved she was
+that when he came back strong and well, he did not come near her or
+her husband, and offered no congratulations. She had not deliberately
+wronged him. She knew he cared for her: but so did Lepage. A promise
+had been given to neither when Jaspar Hume went away; and after that
+she grew to love the successful, kind-mannered genius who became her
+husband. No real pledge had been broken. Even in this happiness of
+hers, sitting once again at her husband's feet, she thought with tender
+kindness of the man who had cared for her eleven years ago; and who had
+but now saved her husband.
+
+"He has not succeeded in life," she repeated softly. Looking down at
+her, his brow burning with a white heat, Lepage said: "He is a great
+man, Rose."
+
+"I am sure he is a good man," she added.
+
+Perhaps Lepage had borrowed some strength not all his own, for he said
+almost sternly: "He is a great man."
+
+His wife looked up half-startled and said: "Very well, dear; he is a
+good man--and a great man."
+
+The sunlight still came in through the open door. The Saskatchewan
+flowed swiftly between its verdant banks, an eagle went floating away to
+the west, robins made vocal a solitary tree a few yards away, troopers
+moved backwards and forwards across the square, and a hen and her
+chickens came fluttering to the threshold. The wife looked at the yellow
+brood drawing close to their mother, and her eyes grew wistful. She
+thought of their one baby asleep in an English grave. But thinking of
+the words of the captain of the White Guard, Lepage said firmly: "We
+will begin the world again."
+
+She smiled, and rose to kiss him as the hen and chickens hastened away
+from the door, and a clear bugle call sounded in the square.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+Eleven years have gone since that scene was enacted at Edmonton.
+
+A great gathering is dispersing from a hall in Piccadilly. It has been
+drawn together to do honour to a man who has achieved a triumph in
+engineering science. As he steps from the platform to go, he is greeted
+by a fusilade of cheers. He bows calmly and kindly. He is a man of
+vigorous yet reserved aspect; he has a rare individuality. He receives
+with a quiet cordiality the personal congratulations of his friends. He
+remains for some time in conversation with a royal duke, who takes his
+arm, and with him passes into the street. The duke is a member of this
+great man's club, and offers him a seat in his brougham. Amid the cheers
+of the people they drive away together. Inside the club there are fresh
+congratulations, and it is proposed to arrange an impromptu dinner,
+at which the duke will preside. But with modesty and honest thanks
+the great man declines. He pleads an engagement. He had pleaded this
+engagement the day before to a well-known society. After his health is
+proposed, he makes his adieux, and leaving the club, walks away towards
+a West-end square. In one of its streets he pauses, and enters
+a building called "Providence Chambers." His servant hands him a
+cablegram. He passes to his library, and, standing before the fire,
+opens it. It reads: "My wife and I send congratulations to the great
+man."
+
+Jaspar Hume stands for a moment looking at the fire, and then says
+simply: "I wish poor old Bouche were here." He then sits down and writes
+this letter:
+
+   My dear Friends,--Your cablegram has made me glad. The day is over.
+   My latest idea was more successful than I even dared to hope; and
+   the world has been kind. I went down to see your boy, Jaspar, at
+   Clifton last week. It was his birthday, you know--nine years old,
+   and a clever, strong-minded little fellow. He is quite contented.
+   As he is my god-child, I again claimed the right of putting a
+   thousand dollars to his credit in the bank,--I have to speak of
+   dollars to you people living in Canada--which I have done on his
+   every birthday. When he is twenty-one he will have twenty-one
+   thousand dollars--quite enough for a start in life. We get along
+   well together, and I think he will develop a fine faculty for
+   science. In the summer, as I said, I will bring him over to you.
+   There is nothing more to say to-night except that I am as always,
+
+          Your faithful and loving friend,
+                            JASPAR HUME.
+
+A moment after the letter was finished, the servant entered and
+announced "Mr. Late Carscallen." With a smile and hearty greeting the
+great man and this member of the White Guard met. It was to entertain
+his old arctic comrade that Jaspar Hume had declined to be entertained
+by society or club. A little while after, seated at the table, the
+ex-sub-factor said: "You found your brother well, Carscallen?"
+
+The jaws moved slowly as of old. "Ay, that, and a grand meenister, sir."
+
+"He wanted you to stay in Scotland, I suppose?"
+
+"Ay, that, but there's no place for me like Fort Providence."
+
+"Try this pheasant. And you are sub-factor now, Carscallen?"
+
+"There's two of us sub-factors--Jeff Hyde and myself. Mr. Field is old,
+and can't do much work, and trade's heavy now."
+
+"I know. I hear from the factor now and then. And Gaspe Toujours, what
+of him?"
+
+"He went away three years ago, and he said he'd come back. He never
+did though. Jeff Hyde believes he will. He says to me a hundred times,
+'Carscallen, he made the sign of the cross that he'd come back from
+Saint Gabrielle; and that's next to the Book with a papist. If he's
+alive he'll come.'"
+
+"Perhaps he will, Carscallen. And Cloud-in-the-Sky?"
+
+"He's still there, and comes in and smokes with Jeff Hyde and me, as
+he used to do with you; but he doesn't obey our orders as he did
+yours, sir. He said to me when I left: 'You see Strong-back, tell him
+Cloud-in-the-Sky good Injun--he never forget. How!'"
+
+Jaspar Hume raised his glass with smiling and thoughtful eyes: "To
+Cloud-in-the-Sky and all who never forget!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The March Of The White Guard, by Gilbert Parker
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The March of The White Guard, by G. Parker
+#50 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+Title: The March Of The White Guard
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+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6223]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on September 27, 2002]
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARCH OF THE WHITE GUARD, BY PARKER ***
+
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+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MARCH OF THE WHITE GUARD
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+"Ask Mr. Hume to come here for a moment, Gosse," said Field, the chief
+factor, as he turned from the frosty window of his office at Fort
+Providence, one of the Hudson's Bay Company's posts.  The servant, or
+more properly, Orderly-Sergeant Gosse, late of the Scots Guards, departed
+on his errand, glancing curiously at his master's face as he did so.  The
+chief factor, as he turned round, unclasped his hands from behind him,
+took a few steps forward, then standing still in the centre of the room,
+read carefully through a letter which he had held in the fingers of his
+right hand for the last ten minutes as he scanned the wastes of snow
+stretching away beyond Great Slave Lake to the arctic circle.  He
+meditated a moment, went back to the window, looked out again, shook his
+head negatively, and with a sigh, walked over to the huge fireplace.  He
+stood thoughtfully considering the floor until the door opened and sub-
+factor Jaspar Hume entered.
+
+The factor looked up and said: "Hume, I've something here that's been
+worrying me a bit.  This letter came in the monthly batch this morning.
+It is from a woman.  The company sends another commending the cause of
+the woman and urging us to do all that is possible to meet her wishes.
+It seems that her husband is a civil engineer of considerable fame.  He
+had a commission to explore the Coppermine region and a portion of the
+Barren Grounds.  He was to be gone six months.  He has been gone a year.
+He left Fort Good Hope, skirted Great Bear Lake, and reached the
+Coppermine River.  Then he sent back all of the Indians who accompanied
+him but two, they bearing the message that he would make the Great Fish
+River and come down by Great Slave Lake to Fort Providence.  That was
+nine months ago.  He has not come here, nor to any other of the forts,
+so far as is known, nor has any word been received from him.  His wife,
+backed by the H.B.C., urges that a relief party be sent to look for him.
+They and she forget that this is the arctic region, and that the task is
+a well-nigh hopeless one.  He ought to have been here six months ago.
+Now how can we do anything?  Our fort is small, and there is always
+danger of trouble with the Indians.  We can't force men to join a relief
+party like this, and who will volunteer?  Who would lead such a party and
+who will make up the party to be led?"
+
+The brown face of Jaspar Hume was not mobile.  It changed in
+expression but seldom; it preserved a steady and satisfying character
+of intelligence and force.  The eyes, however, were of an inquiring,
+debating kind, that moved from one thing to another as if to get a sense
+of balance before opinion or judgment was expressed.  The face had
+remained impassive, but the eyes had kindled a little as the factor
+talked.  To the factor's despairing question there was not an immediate
+reply.  The eyes were debating.  But they suddenly steadied and Jaspar
+Hume said sententiously: "A relief party should go."
+
+"Yes, yes, but who is to lead them?"
+
+Again the eyes debated.
+
+"Read her letter," said the factor, handing it over.  Jaspar Hume took it
+and mechanically scanned it.  The factor had moved towards the table for
+his pipe or he would have seen the other start, and his nostrils slightly
+quiver, as his eyes grew conscious of what they were seeing.  Turning
+quickly, Hume walked towards the window as though for more light, and
+with his back to the factor he read the letter.  Then he turned and said:
+"I think this thing should be done."
+
+The factor shrugged his shoulders slightly.  "Well, as to that, I think
+so too, but thinking and doing are two different things, Hume."
+
+"Will you leave the matter in my hands until the morning?"
+
+"Yes, of course, and glad to do so.  You are the only man who can arrange
+the affair, if it is to be done at all.  But I tell you, as you know,
+that everything will depend upon a leader, even if you secure the men....
+So you had better keep the letter for to-night.  It may help you to get
+the men together.  A woman's handwriting will do more than a man's word
+any time."
+
+Jaspar Hume's eyes had been looking at the factor, but they were studying
+something else.  His face seemed not quite so fresh as it was a few
+minutes before.
+
+"I will see you at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, Mr. Field," he said
+quietly.  "Will you let Gosse come to me in an hour?"
+
+"Certainly.  Good-night."
+
+Jaspar Hume let himself out.  He walked across a small square to a log
+house and opened a door which creaked and shrieked with the frost.
+A dog sprang upon him as he did so, and rubbed its head against his
+breast.  He touched the head as if it had been that of a child,
+and said: "Lie down, Bouche."
+
+It did so, but it watched him as he doffed his dogskin cap and buffalo
+coat.  He looked round the room slowly once as though he wished to fix it
+clearly and deeply in his mind.  Then he sat down and held near the
+firelight the letter the factor had given him.  His features grew stern
+and set as he read it.  Once he paused in the reading and looked into the
+fire, drawing his breath sharply between his teeth.  Then he read it to
+the end without a sign.  A pause, and he said aloud: "So this is how the
+lines meet again, Varre Lepage!"  He read the last sentence of the letter
+aloud:
+
+     In the hope that you may soon give me good news of my husband,
+     I am, with all respect,
+
+                              Faithfully yours,
+
+                                             ROSE LEPAGE.
+
+Again he repeated: "With all respect, faithfully yours, Rose Lepage."
+
+The dog Bouche looked up.  Perhaps it detected something unusual in the
+voice.  It rose, came over, and laid its head on its master's knee.
+Hume's hand fell gently on the head, and he said to the fire: "Ah, Rose
+Lepage, you can write to Factor Field what you dare not write to your
+husband if you knew.  You might say to him then, 'With all love,' but not
+'With all respect.'"
+
+He folded the letter and put it in his pocket.  Then he took the dog's
+head between his hands and said: "Listen, Bouche, and I will tell you a
+story."  The dog blinked, and pushed its nose against his arm.
+
+"Ten years ago two young men who had studied and graduated together at
+the same college were struggling together in their profession as civil
+engineers.  One was Clive Lepage and the other was Jaspar Hume.  The one
+was brilliant and persuasive, the other, persistent and studious.  Lepage
+could have succeeded in any profession; Hume had only heart and mind for
+one.
+
+"Only for one, Bouche, you understand.  He lived in it, he loved it, he
+saw great things to be achieved in it.  He had got an idea.  He worked at
+it night and day, he thought it out, he developed it, he perfected it,
+he was ready to give it to the world.  But he was seized with illness,
+became blind, and was ordered to a warm climate for a year.  He left his
+idea, his invention, behind him--his complete idea.  While he was gone
+his bosom friend stole his perfected idea--yes, stole it, and sold it
+for twenty thousand dollars.  He was called a genius, a great inventor.
+And then he married her.  You don't know her, Bouche.  You never saw
+beautiful Rose Varcoe, who, liking two men, chose the one who was
+handsome and brilliant, and whom the world called a genius.  Why didn't
+Jaspar Hume expose him, Bouche?  Proof is not always easy, and then he
+had to think of her.  One has to think of a woman in such a case, Bouche.
+Even a dog can see that."
+
+He was silent for a moment, and then he said: "Come, Bouche.  You will
+keep secret what I show you."
+
+He went to a large box in the corner, unlocked it, and took out a model
+made of brass and copper and smooth but unpolished wood.
+
+"After ten years of banishment, Bouche, Hume has worked out another idea,
+you see.  It should be worth ten times the other, and the world called
+the other the work of a genius, dog."
+
+Then he became silent, the animal watching him the while.  It had seen
+him working at this model for many a day, but had never heard him talk so
+much at a time as he had done this last ten minutes.  He was generally a
+silent man--decisive even to severity, careless carriers and shirking
+under-officers thought.  Yet none could complain that he was unjust.  He
+was simply straight-forward, and he had no sympathy with those who had
+not the same quality.  He had carried a drunken Indian on his back for
+miles, and from a certain death by frost.  He had, for want of a more
+convenient punishment, promptly knocked down Jeff Hyde, the sometime
+bully of the fort, for appropriating a bundle of furs belonging to a
+French half-breed, Gaspe Toujours.  But he nursed Jeff Hyde through an
+attack of pneumonia, insisting at the same time that Gaspe Toujours
+should help him.  The result of it all was that Jeff Hyde and Gaspe
+Toujours became constant allies.  They both formulated their oaths by
+Jaspar Hume.  The Indian, Cloud-in-the-Sky, though by word never thanking
+his rescuer, could not be induced to leave the fort, except on some
+mission with which Jaspar Hume was connected.  He preferred living an
+undignified, un-Indian life, and earning food and shelter by coarsely
+labouring with his hands.  He came at least twice a week to Hume's log
+house, and, sitting down silent and cross-legged before the fire, watched
+the sub-factor working at his drawings and calculations.  Sitting so for
+perhaps an hour or more, and smoking all the time, he would rise, and
+with a grunt, which was answered by a kindly nod, would pass out as
+silently as he came.
+
+And now as Jaspar Hume stood looking at his "Idea," Cloud-in-the-Sky
+entered, let his blanket fall by the hearthstone and sat down upon it.
+If Hume saw him or heard him, he at least gave no sign at first.  But he
+said at last in a low tone to the dog: "It is finished, Bouche; it is
+ready for the world."
+
+Then he put it back, locked the box, and turned towards Cloud-in-the-Sky
+and the fireplace.  The Indian grunted; the other nodded with the
+debating look again dominant in his eyes.  The Indian met the look with
+satisfaction.  There was something in Jaspar Hume's habitual reticence
+and decisiveness in action which appealed more to Cloud-in-the-Sky than
+any freedom of speech could possibly have done.
+
+Hume sat down, handed the Indian a pipe and tobacco, and, with arms
+folded, watched the fire.  For half an hour they sat so, white man,
+Indian, and dog.  Then Hume rose, went to a cupboard, took out some
+sealing wax and matches, and in a moment melted wax was dropping upon the
+lock of the box containing his Idea.  He had just finished this as
+Sergeant Gosse knocked at the door, and immediately afterwards entered
+the room.
+
+"Gosse," said the sub-factor, "find Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late
+Carscallen, and bring them here."  Sergeant Gosse immediately departed
+upon this errand.  Hume then turned to the Indian, and said "Cloud-in-
+the-Sky, I want you to go a long journey hereaway to the Barren Grounds.
+Have twelve dogs ready by nine to-morrow morning."
+
+Cloud-in-the-Sky shook his head thoughtfully, and then after a pause
+said: "Strong-back go too?"  Strongback was his name for the sub-factor.
+But the other either did not or would not hear.  The Indian, however,
+appeared satisfied, for he smoked harder afterwards, and grunted to
+himself many times.  A few moments passed, and then Sergeant Gosse
+entered, followed by Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late Carscallen.
+Late Carscallen had got his name "Late" from having been called "The Late
+Mr. Carscallen" by the chief factor because of his slowness.  Slow as he
+was, however, the stout Scotsman had more than once proved himself a man
+of rare merit according to Hume's ideas.  He was, of course, the last to
+enter.
+
+The men grouped themselves about the fire, Late Carscallen getting the
+coldest corner.  Each man drew his tobacco from his pocket, and, cutting
+it, waited for Hume to speak.  His eyes were debating as they rested on
+the four.  Then he took out Mrs. Lepage's letter, and, with the group
+looking at him, he read it aloud.  When it was finished, Cloud-in-the-Sky
+gave a guttural assent, and Gaspe Toujours, looking at Jeff Hyde, said:
+"It is cold in the Barren Grounds.  We shall need much tabac."  These men
+could read without difficulty Hume's reason for summoning them.  To Gaspe
+Toujours' remark Jeff Hyde nodded affirmatively, and then all looked at
+Late Carscallen.  He opened his heavy jaws once or twice with an animal-
+like sound, and then he said, in a general kind of way:
+
+"To the Barren Grounds.  But who leads?"
+
+Hume was writing on a slip of paper, and he did not reply.  The faces of
+three of them showed just a shade of anxiety.  They guessed who it would
+be, but they were not sure.  Cloud-in-the-Sky, however, grunted at them,
+and raised the bowl of his pipe towards the subfactor.  The anxiety then
+seemed to disappear.
+
+For ten minutes more they sat so, all silent.  Then Hume rose, handed the
+slip of paper to Sergeant Gosse, and said: "Attend to that at once,
+Gosse.  Examine the food and blankets closely."
+
+The five were left alone.
+
+Then Hume spoke: "Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, Late Carscallen, and Cloud-
+in-the-Sky, this man, alive or dead, is between here and the Barren
+Grounds.  He must be found--for his wife's sake."
+
+He handed Jeff Hyde her letter.  Jeff rubbed his fingers before he
+touched the delicate and perfumed missive.  Its delicacy seemed to
+bewilder him.  He said: in a rough but kindly way: "Hope to die if I
+don't," and passed it on to Gaspe Toujours, who did not find it necessary
+to speak.  His comrade had answered for him.  Late Carscallen held it
+inquisitively for a moment, and then his jaws opened and shut as if he
+were about to speak.  But before he did so Hume said: "It is a long
+journey and a hard one.  Those who go may never come back.  But this man
+was working for his country, and he has got a wife--a good wife."  He
+held up the letter.  "Late Carscallen wants to know who will lead you.
+Can't you trust me?  I will give you a leader that you will follow to the
+Barren Grounds.  To-morrow you will know who he is.  Are you satisfied?
+Will you do it?"
+
+The four rose, and Cloud-in-the-Sky nodded approvingly many times.  Hume
+held out his hand.  Each man shook it, Jeff Hyde first.  Then he said:
+"Close up ranks for the H.B.C.!"  (H.B.C.  meaning, of course, Hudson's
+Bay Company.)
+
+With a good man to lead them, these four would have stormed, alone, the
+Heights of Balaklava.
+
+Once more Hume spoke.  "Go to Gosse and get your outfits at nine to-
+morrow morning.  Cloud-in-the-Sky, have your sleds at the store at eight
+o'clock, to be loaded.  Then all meet me at 10.15 at the office of the
+chief factor.  Good night."
+
+As they passed out into the semi-arctic night, Late Carscallen with an
+unreal obstinacy said: "Slow march to the Barren Grounds--but who leads?"
+
+Left alone Hume sat down to the pine table at one end of the room and
+after a short hesitation began to write.  For hours he sat there, rising
+only to put wood on the fire.  The result was three letters: the largest
+addressed to a famous society in London, one to a solicitor in Montreal,
+and one to Mr. Field, the chief factor.  They were all sealed carefully.
+Then he rose, took out his knife, and went over to the box as if to break
+the red seal.  He paused, however, sighed, and put the knife back again.
+As he did so he felt something touch his leg.  It was the dog.
+
+Hume drew in a sharp breath and said: "It was all ready, Bouche; and in
+another six months I should have been in London with it.  But it will go
+whether I go or not--whether I go or not, Bouche."
+
+The dog sprang up and put his head against his master's breast.
+
+"Good dog, good dog, it's all right, Bouche; however it goes, it's all
+right," said Hume.
+
+Then the dog lay down and watched his master until he drew the blankets
+to his chin, and sleep drew oblivion over a fighting soul.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+At ten o'clock next morning Jaspar Hume presented himself at the chief
+factor's office.  He bore with him the letters he had written the night
+before.
+
+The factor said: "Well, Hume, I am glad to see you.  That woman's letter
+was on my mind all night.  Have you anything to propose?  I suppose not,"
+he added despairingly, as he looked closely into the face of the other.
+"Yes, Mr. Field, I propose that the expedition start at noon to-day."
+
+"Start-at noon-to-day?"
+
+"In two hours."
+
+"Who are the party?"
+
+"Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, Late Carscallen, and Cloud-in-the-Sky."
+
+"Who leads them, Hume?  Who leads?"
+
+"With your permission, I do."
+
+"You?  But, man, consider the danger and--your invention!"
+
+"I have considered all.  Here are three letters.  If we do not come back
+in three months, you will please send this one, with the box in my room,
+to the address on the envelope.  This is for a solicitor in Montreal,
+which you will also forward as soon as possible; and this last one is for
+yourself; but you will not open it until the three months have passed.
+Have I your permission to lead these men?  They would not go without me."
+
+"I know that, I know that, Hume.  I can't say no.  Go, and good luck go
+with you."
+
+Here the manly old factor turned away his head.  He knew that Hume had
+done right.  He knew the possible sacrifice this man was making of all
+his hopes, of his very life; and his sound Scotch heart appreciated the
+act to the full.  But he did not know all.  He did not know that Jaspar
+Hume was starting to search for the man who had robbed him of youth and
+hope and genius and home.
+
+"Here is a letter that the wife has written to her husband on the chance
+of his getting it.  You will take it with you, Hume.  And the other she
+wrote to me--shall I keep it?"  He held out his hand.
+
+"No, sir, I will keep it, if you will allow me.  It is my commission, you
+know."  The shadow of a smile hovered about Hume's lips.
+
+The factor smiled kindly as he replied: "Ah, yes, your commission--
+Captain Jaspar Hume of--of what?"  Just then the door opened and there
+entered the four men who had sat before the sub-factor's fire the night
+before.  They were dressed in white blanket costumes from head to foot,
+white woollen capotes covering the grey fur caps they wore.  Jaspar Hume
+ran his eye over them and then answered the factor's question: "Of the
+White Guard, sir."
+
+"Good," was the reply.  "Men, you are going on a relief expedition.
+There will be danger.  You need a good leader.  You have one in Captain
+Hume."
+
+Jeff Hyde shook his head at the others with a pleased I-told-you-so
+expression; Cloud-in-the-Sky grunted his deep approval; and Late
+Carscallen smacked his lips in a satisfied manner and rubbed his leg with
+a schoolboy sense of enjoyment.  The factor continued: "In the name of
+the Hudson's Bay Company I will say that if you come back, having done
+your duty faithfully, you shall be well rewarded.  And I believe you will
+come back, if it is in human power to do so."
+
+Here Jeff Hyde said: "It isn't for reward we're doin' it, Mr. Field, but
+because Mr. Hume wished it, because we believed he'd lead us; and for the
+lost fellow's wife.  We wouldn't have said we'd do it, if it wasn't for
+him that's just called us the White Guard."
+
+Under the bronze of the sub-factor's face there spread a glow more red
+than brown, and he said simply: "Thank you, men"--for they had all nodded
+assent to Jeff Hyde's words--"come with me to the store.  We will start
+at noon."
+
+At noon the White Guard stood in front of the store on which the British
+flag was hoisted with another beneath it bearing the magic letters,
+H.B.C.:  magic, because they opened to the world regions that seemed
+destined never to know the touch of civilisation.  The few inhabitants of
+the fort were gathered at the store; the dogs and loaded sleds were at
+the door.  It wanted but two minutes to twelve when Hume came from his
+house, dressed also in the white blanket costume, and followed by his
+dog, Bouche.  In a moment more he had placed Bouche at the head of the
+first team of dogs.  They were to have their leader too.  Punctually at
+noon, Hume shook hands with the factor, said a quick good-bye to the
+rest, called out a friendly "How!" to the Indians standing near, and
+to the sound of a hearty cheer, heartier perhaps because none had a
+confident hope that the five would come back, the march of the White
+Guard began.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+It was eighteen days after.  In the shadow of a little island of pines,
+that lies in a shivering waste of ice and snow, the White Guard were
+camped.  They were able to do this night what they had not done for days
+--dig a great grave of snow, and building a fire of pine wood at each end
+of this strange house, get protection and something like comfort.  They
+sat silent close to the fires.  Jaspar Hume was writing with numbed
+fingers.  The extract that follows is taken from his diary.  It tells
+that day's life, and so gives an idea of harder, sterner days that they
+had spent and must yet spend, on this weary journey.
+
+     December 25th.--This is Christmas Day and Camp twenty-seven.  We
+     have marched only five miles to-day.  We are eighty miles from Great
+     Fish River, and the worst yet to do.  We have discovered no signs.
+     Jeff Hyde has had a bad two days with his frozen foot.  Gaspe
+     Toujours helps him nobly.  One of the dogs died this morning.
+     Bouche is a great leader.  This night's shelter is a god-send.
+     Cloud-in-the-Sky has a plan whereby some of us will sleep well.  We
+     are in latitude 63deg 47' and longitude 112deg 32' 14".  Have worked
+     out lunar observations.  Have marked a tree JH/27 and raised cairn
+     No. 3.
+
+     We are able to celebrate Christmas Day with a good basin of tea and
+     our stand-by of beans cooked in fat.  I was right about them: they
+     have great sustaining power.  To-morrow we will start at ten
+     o'clock.
+
+The writing done, Jaspar Hume put his book away and turned towards the
+rest.  Cloud-in-the-Sky and Late Carscallen were smoking.  Little could
+be seen of their faces; they were snuffled to the eyes.  Gaspe Toujours
+was drinking a basin of tea, and Jeff Hyde was fitfully dozing by the
+fire.  The dogs were above in the tent--all but Bouche, who was permitted
+to be near his master.  Presently the sub-factor rose, took from a
+knapsack a small tin pail, and put it near the fire.  Then he took five
+little cups that fitted snugly into each other, separated them, and put
+them also near the fire.  None of the party spoke.  A change seemed to
+pass over the faces of all except Cloud-in-the-Sky.  He smoked on
+unmoved.  At length Hume spoke cheerily: "Now, men, before we turn in
+we'll do something in honour of the day.  Liquor we none of us have
+touched since we started; but back there in the fort, and maybe in other
+places too, they will be thinking of us; so we'll drink a health to them,
+though it's but a spoonful, and to the day when we see them again!"
+
+The cups were passed round.  The sub-factor measured out a very small
+portion to each.  They were not men of uncommon sentiment; their lives
+were rigid and isolated and severe.  Fireside comforts under fortunate
+conditions they saw but seldom, and they were not given to expressing
+their feelings demonstratively.  But each man then, save Cloud-in-the-
+Sky, had some memory worth a resurrection.
+
+Jaspar Hume raised his cup; the rest followed his example.  "To absent
+friends and the day when we see them again!" he said; and they all
+drank.  Gaspe Toujours drank solemnly, and, as though no one was near,
+made the sign of the cross; for his memory was with a dark-eyed, soft-
+cheeked habitant girl of the parish of Saint Gabrielle, whom he had left
+behind seven years before, and had never seen since.  Word had come from
+the parish priest that she was dying, and though he wrote back in his
+homely patois of his grief, and begged that the good father would write
+again, no word had ever come.  He thought of her now as one for whom the
+candles had been lighted and masses had been said.
+
+But Jeff Hyde's eyes were bright, and suffering as he was, the heart in
+him was brave and hopeful.  He was thinking of a glorious Christmas Day
+upon the Madawaska River three years agone; of Adam Henry, the blind
+fiddler; of bright, warm-hearted Pattie Chown, the belle of the ball, and
+the long drive home in the frosty night.
+
+Late Carscallen was thinking of a brother whom he had heard preach his
+first sermon in Edinburgh twenty years before.  And Late Carscallen, slow
+of speech and thought, had been full of pride and love of that brilliant
+brother.  In the natural course of things, they had drifted apart, the
+slow and uncouth one to make his home at last in the Far North, and to be
+this night on his way to the Barren Grounds.  But as he stood with the
+cup to his lips he recalled the words of a newspaper paragraph of a few
+months before.  It stated that "the Reverend James Carscallen, D.D.,
+preached before Her Majesty on Whitsunday, and had the honour of lunching
+with Her Majesty afterwards."  Remembering that, Late Carscallen rubbed
+his left hand joyfully against his blanketed leg and drank.
+
+Cloud-in-the-Sky's thoughts were with the present, and his "Ugh!" of
+approval was one of the senses purely.  Instead of drinking to absent
+friends he looked at the sub-factor and said: "How!"  He drank to the
+subfactor.
+
+Jaspar Hume had a memory of childhood; of a house beside a swift-flowing
+river, where a gentle widowed mother braced her heart against misfortune
+and denied herself and slaved that her son might be educated.  He had
+said to her that some day he would be a great man, and she would be paid
+back a hundredfold.  And he had worked hard at school, very hard.  But
+one cold day of spring a message came to the school, and he sped
+homewards to the house beside the dark river down which the ice was
+floating,--he would remember that floating ice to his last day, and
+entered a quiet room where a white-faced woman was breathing away her
+life.  And he fell at her side and kissed her hand and called to her; and
+she waked for a moment only and smiled on him, and said: "Be good, my
+boy, and God will make you great."  Then she said she was cold, and some
+one felt her feet--a kind old soul who shook her head sadly at him; and
+a voice, rising out of a strange smiling languor, murmured: "I'll away,
+I'll away to the Promised Land--to the Promised Land.  .  .  .  It is
+cold--so cold--God keep my boy!"  Then the voice ceased, and the kind
+old soul who had looked at him, pityingly folded her arms about him, and
+drawing his brown head to her breast, kissed him with flowing eyes and
+whispered: "Come away, laddie, come away."
+
+But he came back in the night and sat beside her, and remained there till
+the sun grew bright, and then through another day and night, until they
+bore her out of the little house by the river to the frozen hill-side.
+
+Sitting here in this winter desolation Jaspar Hume once more beheld these
+scenes of twenty years before and followed himself, a poor dispensing
+clerk in a doctor's office, working for that dream of achievement in
+which his mother believed; for which she hoped.  And following further
+the boy that was himself, he saw a friendless first-year man at college,
+soon, however, to make a friend of Clive Lepage, and to see always the
+best of that friend, being himself so true.  At last the day came when
+they both graduated together in science, a bright and happy day,
+succeeded by one still brighter, when they both entered a great firm as
+junior partners.  Afterwards befell the meeting with Rose Varcoe; and he
+thought of how he praised his friend Lepage to her, and brought him to be
+introduced to her.  He recalled all those visions that came to him when,
+his professional triumphs achieved, he should have a happy home, and
+happy faces by his fireside.  And the face was to be that of Rose Varcoe,
+and the others, faces of those who should be like her and like himself.
+He saw, or rather felt, that face clouded and anxious when he went away
+ill and blind for health's sake.  He did not write to her.  The doctors
+forbade him that.  He did not ask her to write, for his was so steadfast
+a nature that he did not need letters to keep him true; and he thought
+she must be the same.  He did not understand a woman's heart, how it
+needs remembrances, and needs to give remembrances.
+
+Hume's face in the light of this fire seemed calm and cold, yet behind it
+was an agony of memory--the memory of the day when he discovered that
+Lepage was married to Rose, and that the trusted friend had grown famous
+and well-to-do on the offspring of his brain.  His first thought had been
+one of fierce determination to expose this man who had falsified all
+trust.  But then came the thought of the girl, and, most of all, there
+came the words of his dying mother, "Be good, my boy, and God will make
+you great"; and for his mother's sake he had compassion on the girl, and
+sought no restitution from her husband.  And now, ten years later, he did
+not regret that he had stayed his hand.  The world had ceased to call
+Lepage a genius.  He had not fulfilled the hope once held of him.  Hume
+knew this from occasional references in scientific journals.
+
+And now he was making this journey to save, if he could, Lepage's life.
+Though just on the verge of a new era in his career--to give to the world
+the fruit of ten years' thought and labour, he had set all behind him,
+that he might be true to the friendship of his youth, that he might be
+clear of the strokes of conscience to the last hour of his life.
+
+Looking round him now, the debating look came again into his eyes.  He
+placed his hand in his breast, and let it rest there for a moment.  The
+look became certain and steady, the hand was drawn out, and in it was a
+Book of Common Prayer.  Upon the fly-leaf was written: "Jane Hume, to her
+dear son Jaspar, on his twelfth birthday."
+
+These men of the White Guard were not used to religious practices,
+whatever their past had been in that regard, and at any other time they
+might have been surprised at this action of their leader.  Under some
+circumstances it might have lessened their opinion of him; but his
+influence over them now was complete.  They knew they were getting nearer
+to him than they had ever done; even Cloud-in-the-Sky appreciated that.
+Hume spoke no word to them, but looked at them and stood up.  They all
+did the same, Jeff Hyde leaning on the shoulders of Gaspe Toujours.  He
+read first, four verses of the Thirty-first Psalm, then followed the
+prayer of St. Chrysostom, and the beautiful collect which appeals to the
+Almighty to mercifully look upon the infirmities of men, and to stretch
+forth His hand to keep and defend them in all dangers and necessities.
+Late Carscallen, after a long pause, said "Amen," and Jeff said in a
+whisper to Gaspe Toujours: "That's to the point.  Infirmities and dangers
+and necessities is what troubles us."
+
+Immediately after, at a sign from the sub-factor, Cloud-in-the-Sky began
+to transfer the burning wood from one fire to the other until only hot
+ashes were left where a great blaze had been.  Over these ashes pine
+twigs and branches were spread, and over them again blankets.  The word
+was then given to turn in, and Jeff Hyde, Gaspe Toujours, and Late
+Carscallen lay down in this comfortable bed.  Each wished to give way to
+their captain, but he would not consent.  He and Cloud-in-the-Sky wrapped
+themselves in their blankets like mummies, covering the head completely,
+and under the arctic sky they slept alone in an austere and tenantless
+world.  They never know how loftily sardonic Nature can be who have not
+seen that land where the mercury freezes in the tubes, and there is light
+but no warmth in the smile of the sun.  Not Sturt in the heart of
+Australia with the mercury bursting the fevered tubes, with the finger-
+nails breaking like brittle glass, with the ink drying instantly on the
+pen, with the hair fading and falling off, would, if he could, have
+exchanged his lot for that of the White Guard.  They were in a frozen
+endlessness that stretched away to a world where never voice of man or
+clip of wing or tread of animal is heard.  It is the threshold to the
+undiscovered country, to that untouched north whose fields of white are
+only furrowed by the giant forces of the elements; on whose frigid
+hearthstone no fire is ever lit; where the electric phantoms of a
+nightless land pass and repass, and are never still; where the magic
+needle points not towards the north but darkly downward; where the sun
+never stretches warm hands to him who dares confront the terrors of
+eternal snow.
+
+The White Guard slept.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"No, Captain; leave me here and push on to Manitou Mountain.  You ought
+to make it in two days.  I'm just as safe here as on the sleds, and less
+trouble.  A blind man's no good.  I'll have a good rest while you're
+gone, and then perhaps my eyes will come out right.  My foot's nearly
+well now."
+
+Jeff Hyde was snow-blind.  The giant of the party had suffered most.
+
+But Hume said in reply: "I won't leave you alone.  The dogs can carry you
+as they've done for the last ten days."
+
+But Jeff replied: "I'm as safe here as marching, and safer.  When the
+dogs are not carrying me, nor any one leading me, you can get on faster;
+and that means everything to us, now don't it?"
+
+Hume met the eyes of Gaspe Toujours.  He read them.  Then he said to
+Jeff: "It shall be as you wish.  Late Carscallen, Cloud-in-the-Sky, and
+myself will push on to Manitou Mountain.  You and Gaspe Toujours will
+remain here."
+
+Jeff Hyde's blind eyes turned towards Gaspe Toujours, who said: "Yes.
+We have plenty tabac."
+
+A tent was set up, provisions were put in it, a spirit-lamp and matches
+were added, and the simple menage was complete.  Not quite.  Jaspar Hume
+looked round.  There was not a tree in sight.  He stooped and cut away a
+pole that was used for strengthening the runners of the sleds, fastened
+it firmly in the ground, and tied to it a red woollen scarf, used for
+tightening his white blankets round him.  Then he said: "Be sure and keep
+that flying."
+
+Jeff's face was turned towards the north.  The blindman's instinct was
+coming to him.  Far off white eddying drifts were rising over long
+hillocks of snow.  When he turned round again his face was troubled.
+It grew more troubled, then it brightened up again, and he said to Hume:
+"Captain, would you leave that book with me till you come back--that
+about infirmities, dangers, and necessities?  I knew a river-boss who
+used to carry an old spelling-book round with him for luck.  It seems to
+me as if that book of yours, Captain, would bring luck to this part of
+the White Guard, that bein' out at heels like has to stay behind."
+
+Hume had borne the sufferings of his life with courage; he had led this
+terrible tramp with no tremor at his heart for himself; he was seeking to
+perform a perilous act without any inward shrinking; but Jeff's request
+was the greatest trial of this critical period in his life.
+
+Jeff felt, if he could not see, the hesitation of his chief.  His rough
+but kind instincts told him something was wrong, and he hastened to add:
+"Beg your pardon, Mr. Hume, it ain't no matter.  I oughtn't have asked
+you for it.  But it's just like me.  I've been a chain on the leg of the
+White Guard this whole tramp."
+
+The moment of hesitation had passed before Jeff had said half-a-dozen
+words, and Hume put the book in his hands with the words: "No, Jeff, take
+it.  It will bring luck to the White Guard.  Keep it safe until I come
+back."
+
+Jeff took the book, but hearing a guttural "Ugh" behind him, he turned
+round defiantly.  Cloud-in-the-Sky touched his arm and said: "Good!
+Strong-back book--good!"  Jeff was satisfied.
+
+At this point they parted, Jeff and Gaspe Toujours remaining, and Hume
+and his two followers going on towards Manitou Mountain.  There seemed
+little probability that Clive Lepage would be found.  In their progress
+eastward and northward they had covered wide areas of country, dividing
+and meeting again after stated hours of travel, but not a sign had been
+seen; neither cairn nor staff nor any mark of human presence.
+
+Hume had noticed Jeff Hyde's face when it was turned to the eddying
+drifts of the north, and he understood what was in the experienced
+huntsman's mind.  He knew that severe weather was before them, and that
+the greatest danger of the journey was to be encountered.
+
+That night they saw Manitou Mountain, cold, colossal, harshly calm; and
+jointly with that sight there arose a shrieking, biting, fearful north
+wind.  It blew upon them in cruel menace of conquest, in piercing
+inclemency.  It struck a freezing terror to their hearts, and grew in
+violent attack until, as if repenting that it had foregone its power to
+save, the sun suddenly grew red and angry, and spread out a shield of
+blood along the bastions of the west.  The wind shrank back and grew less
+murderous, and ere the last red arrow shot up behind the lonely western
+wall of white, the three knew that the worst of the storm had passed and
+that death had drawn back for a time.  What Hume thought may be gathered
+from his diary; for ere he crawled in among the dogs and stretched
+himself out beside Bouche, he wrote these words with aching fingers:
+
+     January 10th: Camp 39.--A bitter day.  We are facing three fears
+     now: the fate of those we left behind; Lepage's fate; and the going
+     back.  We are twenty miles from Manitou Mountain.  If he is found,
+     I should not fear the return journey; success gives hope.  But we
+     trust in God.
+
+Another day passed and at night, after a hard march, they camped five
+miles from Manitou Mountain.  And not a sign!  But Hume felt there was a
+faint chance of Lepage being found at this mountain.  His iron frame had
+borne the hardships of this journey well; his strong heart better.  But
+this night an unaccountable weakness possessed him.  Mind and body were
+on the verge of helplessness.  Bouche seemed to understand this, and when
+he was unhitched from the team of dogs, now dwindled to seven, he leaped
+upon his master's breast.  It was as if some instinct of sympathy, of
+prescience, was passing between the man and the dog.  Hume bent his head
+down to Bouche for an instant and rubbed his side kindly; then he said,
+with a tired accent: "It's all right, old dog, it's all right."
+
+Hume did not sleep well at first, but at length oblivion came.  He waked
+to feel Bouche tugging at his blankets.  It was noon.  Late Carscallen
+and Cloud-in-the-Sky were still sleeping--inanimate bundles among the
+dogs.  In an hour they were on their way again, and towards sunset they
+had reached the foot of Manitou Mountain.  Abruptly from the plain rose
+this mighty mound, blue and white upon a black base.  A few straggling
+pines grew near its foot, defying latitude, as the mountain itself defied
+the calculations of geographers and geologists.  A halt was called.  Late
+Carscallen and Cloud-in-the-Sky looked at the chief.  His eyes were
+scanning the mountain closely.  Suddenly he motioned.  A hundred feet up
+there was a great round hole in the solid rock, and from this hole there
+came a feeble cloud of smoke!  The other two saw also.  Cloud-in-the-Sky
+gave a wild whoop, and from the mountain there came, a moment after, a
+faint replica of the sound.  It was not an echo, for there appeared at
+the mouth of the cave an Indian, who made feeble signs for them to come.
+In a little while they were at the cave.  As Jaspar Hume entered, Cloud-
+in-the-Sky and the stalwart but emaciated Indian who had beckoned to them
+spoke to each other in the Chinook language, the jargon common to all
+Indians of the West.
+
+Jaspar Hume saw a form reclining on a great bundle of pine branches,
+and he knew what Rose Lepage had prayed for was come to pass.  By the
+flickering light of a handful of fire he saw Lepage--rather what was left
+of him--a shadow of energy, a heap of nerveless bones.  His eyes were
+shut, but as Hume, with a quiver of memory and sympathy at his heart,
+stood for an instant, and looked at the man whom he had cherished as a
+friend and found an enemy, Lepage's lips moved and a weak voice said:
+"Who is there?"
+
+"A friend."
+
+"Come-near-me,--friend."
+
+Hume made a motion to Late Carscallen, who was heating some liquor at the
+fire, and then he stooped and lifted up the sick man's head, and took his
+hand.  "You have come--to save me!" whispered the weak voice again.
+
+"Yes; I've come to save you."  This voice was strong and clear and true.
+
+"I seem--to have--heard--your voice before--somewhere before--I seem to--
+have--"
+
+But he had fainted.
+
+Hume poured a little liquor down the sick man's throat, and Late
+Carscallen chafed the delicate hand--delicate in health, it was like that
+of a little child now.  When breath came again Hume whispered to his
+helper "Take Cloud-in-the-Sky and get wood; bring fresh branches.  Then
+clear one of the sleds, and we will start back with him in the early
+morning."
+
+Late Carscallen, looking at the skeleton-like figure, said: "He will
+never get there."
+
+"Yes, he will get there," was Hume's reply.
+
+"But he is dying."
+
+"He goes with me to Fort Providence."
+
+"Ay, to Providence he goes, but not with you," said Late Carscallen,
+doggedly.
+
+Anger flashed in Hume's eye, but he said quietly "Get the wood,
+Carscallen."
+
+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."
+
+"To take me--to her."  Lepage shook his head sadly, but he pressed to his
+lips the letter that Hume had given him.
+
+"To take you to her, Lepage."
+
+"No, I shall never see her again."
+
+"I tell you, you shall.  You can live if you will.  You owe that to her
+--to me--to God."
+
+"To her--to you--to God.  I have been true to none.  I have been
+punished.  I shall die here."
+
+"You shall go to Fort Providence.  Do that in payment of your debt to me,
+Lepage.  I demand that."  In this transgressor there was a latent spark
+of honour, a sense of justice that might have been developed to great
+causes, if some strong nature, seeing his weaknesses, had not condoned
+them, but had appealed to the natural chivalry of an impressionable,
+vain, and weak character.  He struggled to meet Hume's eyes, and doing
+so, he gained confidence and said: "I will try to live.  I will do you
+justice--yet."
+
+"Your first duty is to eat and drink.  We start for Fort Providence
+to-morrow."
+
+The sick man stretched out his hand.  "Food!  Food!" he said.
+
+In tiny portions food and drink were given to him, and his strength
+sensibly increased.  The cave was soon aglow with the fire kindled by
+Late Carscallen and Cloud-in-the-Sky.  There was little speaking, for the
+sick man soon fell asleep.  Lepage's Indian told Cloud-in-the-Sky the
+tale of their march--how the other Indian and the dogs died; how his
+master became ill as they were starting towards Fort Providence from
+Manitou Mountain in the summer weather; how they turned back and took
+refuge in this cave; how month by month they had lived on what would
+hardly keep a rabbit alive; and how, at last, his master urged him to
+press on with his papers; but he would not, and stayed until this day,
+when the last bit of food had been eaten, and they were found.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The next morning Lepage was placed upon a sled, and they started back,
+Bouche barking joyfully as he led off, with Cloud-in-the-Sky beside him.
+There was light in the faces of all, though the light could not be seen
+by reason of their being muffled so.  All day they travelled, scarcely
+halting, Lepage's Indian marching well.  Often the corpse-like bundle on
+the sled was disturbed, and biscuits wet in brandy and bits of preserved
+venison were given.
+
+That night Hume said to Late Carscallen: "I am going to start at the
+first light of the morning to get to Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde as soon
+as possible.  Follow as fast as you can.  He will be safe, if you give
+him food and drink often.  I shall get to the place where we left them
+about noon; you should reach there at night or early the next morning."
+
+"Hadn't you better take Bouche with you?" said Late Carscallen.
+
+The sub-factor thought a moment, and then said: "No, he is needed most
+where he is."
+
+At noon the next day Jaspar Hume looked round upon a billowy plain of sun
+and ice, but saw no staff, no signal, no tent, no sign of human life: of
+Gaspe Toujours or of Jeff Hyde.  His strong heart quailed.  Had he lost
+his way?  He looked at the sun.  He was not sure.  He consulted his
+compass, but it quivered hesitatingly.  For awhile that wild bewilderment
+which seizes upon the minds of the strongest, when lost, mastered him, in
+spite of his struggles against it.  He moved in a maze of half-blindness,
+half-delirium.  He was lost in it, swayed by it.  He began to wander
+about; and there grew upon his senses strange delights and reeling
+agonies.  He heard church bells, he caught at butterflies, he tumbled in
+new-mown hay, he wandered in a tropic garden.  But in the hay a wasp
+stung him, and the butterfly changed to a curling black snake that struck
+at him and glided to a dark-flowing river full of floating ice, and up
+from the river a white hand was thrust, and it beckoned him--beckoned
+him.  He shut his eyes and moved towards it, but a voice stopped him, and
+it said, "Come away, come away," and two arms folded him round, and as he
+went back from the shore he stumbled and fell, and .  .  .  What is this?
+A yielding mass at his feet--a mass that stirs!  He clutches at it, he
+tears away the snow, he calls aloud--and his voice has a faraway
+unnatural sound--"Gaspe Toujours!  Gaspe Toujours!"  Then the figure of a
+man shakes itself in the snow, and a voice says: "Ay, ay, sir!"  Yes, it
+is Gaspe Toujours!  And beside him lies Jeff Hyde, and alive.  "Ay, ay,
+sir, alive!"
+
+Jaspar Hume's mind was itself again.  It had but suffered for a moment
+the agony of delirium.
+
+Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde had lain down in the tent the night of the
+great wind, and had gone to sleep at once.  The staff had been blown
+down, the tent had fallen over them, the drift had covered them, and for
+three days they had slept beneath the snow, never waking.
+
+Jeff Hyde's sight was come again to him.  "You've come back for the
+book," he said.  "You couldn't go on without it.  You ought to have taken
+it yesterday."
+
+He drew it from his pocket.  He was dazed.
+
+"No, Jeff, I've not come back for that, and I did not leave you
+yesterday: it is three days and more since we parted.  The book has
+brought us luck, and the best.  We have found our man; and they'll be
+here to-night with him.  I came on ahead to see how you fared."
+
+In that frost-bitten world Jeff Hyde uncovered his head for a moment.
+"Gaspe Toujours is a papist," he said, "but he read me some of that book
+the day you left, and one thing we went to sleep on: it was that about
+'Lightenin' the darkness, and defendin' us from all the perils and
+dangers of this night.'"  Here Gaspe Toujours made the sign of the cross.
+Jeff Hyde continued half apologetically for his comrade: "That comes
+natural to Gaspe Toujours--I guess it always does to papists.  But I
+never had any trainin' that way, and I had to turn the thing over and
+over, and I fell asleep on it.  And when I wake up three days after,
+here's my eyes as fresh as daisies, and you back, sir, and the thing done
+that we come to do."
+
+He put the Book into Hume's hands and at that moment Gaspe Toujours said:
+"See!"  Far off, against the eastern horizon, appeared a group of moving
+figures.
+
+That night the broken segments of the White Guard were reunited, and
+Clive Lepage slept by the side of Jaspar Hume.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Napoleon might have marched back from Moscow with undecimated legions
+safely enough, if the heart of those legions had not been crushed.  The
+White Guard, with their faces turned homeward, and the man they had
+sought for in their care, seemed to have acquired new strength.  Through
+days of dreadful cold, through nights of appalling fierceness, through
+storm upon the plains that made for them paralysing coverlets, they
+marched.  And if Lepage did not grow stronger, life at least was kept
+in him.
+
+There was little speech among them, but once in a while Gaspe Toujours
+sang snatches of the songs of the voyageurs of the great rivers; and the
+hearts of all were strong.  Between Bouche and his master there was
+occasional demonstration.  On the twentieth day homeward, Hume said with
+his hand on the dog's head "It had to be done, Bouche; even a dog could
+see that."
+
+And so it was "all right" for the White Guard.  One day when the sun was
+warmer than usual over Fort Providence, and just sixty-five days since
+that cheer had gone up from apprehensive hearts for brave men going out
+into the Barren Grounds, Sergeant Gosse, who, every day, and of late many
+times a day, had swept the north-east with a field-glass, rushed into the
+chief-factor's office, and with a broken voice cried:  "They've all come!
+They've come!"  Then he leaned his arm and head against the wall and
+sobbed.  And the old factor rose from his chair tremblingly, and said his
+thank-god, and went hurriedly into the square.  He did not go steadily,
+however, the joyous news had shaken him, sturdy old pioneer as he was.
+A fringe of white had grown about his temples in the last two months.
+The people of the fort had said they had never seen him so irascible, yet
+so gentle; so uneasy, yet so reserved; so stern about the mouth, yet so
+kind about the eyes as he had been since Hume had gone on this desperate
+errand.
+
+Already the handful of people at the fort had gathered.  Indians left the
+store, and joined the rest; the factor and Sergeant Gosse set out to meet
+the little army of relief.  To the factor's "In the name of the Hudson's
+Bay Company, Mr. Hume," when they met there came "By the help of God,
+sir," and he pointed to the sled whereon Lepage lay.  A feeble hand was
+clasped in the burly hand of the factor, and then they all fell into line
+again, Cloud-in-the-Sky running ahead of the dogs.  Snow had fallen on
+them, and as they entered the stockade, men and dogs were white from head
+to foot.
+
+The White Guard had come back.  Jaspar Hume as simply acknowledged his
+strident welcome as he had done the God-speed two months and more ago.
+With the factor he bore the sick man in, and laid him on his own bed.
+Then he came outside again, and when they cheered him once more, he said:
+"We have come safe through, and I'm thankful.  But remember that my
+comrades in this march deserve your cheers more than I.  Without them
+I couldn't have done anything."
+
+"In our infirmities and in all our dangers and necessities," added Jeff
+Hyde.  "The luck of the world was in that book!"
+
+In another half-hour the White Guard was at ease, and four of them were
+gathered about the great stove in the store, Cloud-in-the-Sky smoking
+placidly, and full of guttural emphasis; Late Carscallen moving his
+animal-like jaws with a sense of satisfaction; Gaspe Toujours talking in
+Chinook to the Indians, in patois to the French clerk, and in broken
+English to them all; and Jeff Hyde exclaiming on the wonders of the
+march, the finding of Lepage at Manitou Mountain, and of himself and
+Gaspe Toujours buried in the snow.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+In Hume's house at midnight Lepage lay asleep with his wife's letters--
+received through the factor--in his hand.  The firelight played upon a
+dark, disappointed face--a doomed, prematurely old face, as it seemed to
+the factor.
+
+"You knew him, then," the factor said, after a long silence, with a
+gesture towards the bed.
+
+"Yes, well, years ago," replied Hume.
+
+Just then the sick man stirred in his sleep, and he said disjointedly:
+"I'll make it all right to you, Hume."  Then came a pause, and a quicker
+utterance: "Forgive--forgive me, Rose."  The factor got up, and turned to
+go, and Hume, with a sorrowful gesture, went over to the bed.
+
+Again the voice said: "Ten years--I have repented ten years--I dare not
+speak--"
+
+The factor touched Hume's arm.  "He has fever.  You and I must nurse him,
+Hume.  You can trust me--you understand."
+
+"Yes, I can trust you," was the reply.  "But I can tell you nothing."
+
+"I do not want to know anything.  If you can watch till two o'clock I
+will relieve you.  I'll send the medicine chest over.  You know how to
+treat him."
+
+The factor passed out, and the other was left alone with the man who had
+wronged him.  The feeling most active in his mind was pity, and, as he
+prepared a draught from his own stock of medicines, he thought the past
+and the present all over.  He knew that however much he had suffered,
+this man had suffered more.  In this silent night there was broken down
+any barrier that may have stood between Lepage and his complete
+compassion.  Having effaced himself from the calculation, justice
+became forgiveness.
+
+He moistened the sick man's lips, and bathed his forehead, and roused him
+once to take a quieting powder.  Then he sat down and wrote to Rose
+Lepage.  But he tore the letter up again and said to the dog: "No,
+Bouche, I can't; the factor must do it.  She needn't know yet that it was
+I who saved him.  It doesn't make any burden of gratitude, if my name is
+kept out of it.  The factor mustn't mention me, Bouche--not yet.  When he
+is well we will go to London with It, Bouche, and we needn't meet her.
+It will be all right, Bouche, all right!"
+
+The dog seemed to understand; for he went over to the box that held It;
+and looked at his master.  Then Jaspar Hume rose, broke the seal,
+unlocked the box and opened it; but he heard the sick man moan, and he
+closed it again and went over to the bed.  The feeble voice said: "I must
+speak--I cannot die so--not so."  Hume moistened the lips once, put a
+cold cloth on the fevered head, and then sat down by the fire again.
+
+Lepage slept at last.  The restless hands grew quiet, the breath became
+more regular, the tortured mind found a short peace.  With the old
+debating look in his eyes, Hume sat there watching until the factor
+relieved him.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+February and March and April were past, and May was come.  Lepage had had
+a hard struggle for life, but he had survived.  For weeks every night
+there was a repetition of that first night after the return: delirious
+self-condemnation, entreaty, appeal to his wife, and Hume's name
+mentioned in shuddering remorse.  With the help of the Indian who had
+shared the sick man's sufferings in the Barren Grounds, the factor and
+Hume nursed him back to life.  After the first night no word had passed
+between the two watchers regarding the substance of Lepage's delirium.
+But one evening the factor was watching alone, and the repentant man from
+his feverish sleep cried out: "Hush, hush!  don't let them know--I stole
+them both, and Rose did not know.  Rose did not know!"
+
+The factor rose and walked away.  The dog was watching him.  He said to
+Bouche: "You have a good master, Bouche."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+In an arm-chair made of hickory and birch-bark by Cloud-in-the-Sky,
+Lepage sat reading a letter from his wife.  She was at Winnipeg, and was
+coming west as far as Regina to meet him on his way down.  He looked a
+wreck; but a handsome wreck.  His refined features, his soft black beard
+and blue eyes, his graceful hand and gentle manners, seemed not to belong
+to an evil-hearted man.  He sat in the sunlight at the door, wrapped
+about in moose and beaver skins.  The world of plain and wood was glad.
+Not so Lepage.  He sat and thought of what was to come.  He had hoped at
+times that he would die, but twice Hume had said: "I demand your life.
+You owe it to your wife--to me."  He had pulled his heart up to this
+demand and had lived.  But what lay before him?  He saw a stony track,
+and he shuddered.
+
+As he sat there facing the future, Hume came to him and said: "If you
+feel up to it, Lepage, we will start for Edmonton on Monday.  I think it
+will be quite safe, and your wife is anxious.  I shall accompany you as
+far as Edmonton; you can then proceed by easy stages, in this pleasant
+weather.  Are you ready to go?"
+
+"Quite ready," was the reply.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+On a beautiful May evening Lepage, Hume, and the White Guard were
+welcomed at Fort Edmonton by the officer in command of the Mounted
+Police.  They were to enjoy the hospitality of the fort for a couple of
+days.  Hume was to go back with Cloud-in-the-Sky and Late Carscallen,
+and a number of Indian carriers; for this was a journey of business too.
+Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde were to press on with Lepage, who was now
+much stronger and better.  One day passed, and on the following morning
+Hume gave instructions to Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde, and made
+preparations for his going back.  He was standing in the Barracks Square,
+when a horseman rode in and made inquiry of a sergeant standing near, if
+Lepage had arrived at the fort.  A few words brought out the fact that
+Rose Lepage was nearing the fort from the south.  The trooper had been
+sent on ahead the day before, but his horse having met with a slight
+accident, he had been delayed.  He had seen the party, however, a long
+distance back in the early morning.  He must now ride away and meet Mrs.
+Lepage, he said.  He was furnished with a fresh horse, and he left,
+bearing a message from Lepage.
+
+Hume decided to leave Fort Edmonton at once, and to take all the White
+Guard back with him; and gave orders to that effect.  Entering the room
+where Lepage sat alone, he said: "Lepage, the time has come for good-bye.
+I am starting for Fort Providence."
+
+But the other replied: "You will wait until my wife comes.  You must."
+There was trouble in his voice.  "I must not."
+
+Lepage braced himself for a heavy task and said: "Hume, if the time has
+come to say good-bye, it has also come when we should speak together for
+once openly: to settle, in so far as can be done, a long account.  You
+have not let my wife know who saved me.  That appears from her letters.
+She asks the name of my rescuer.  I have not yet told her.  But she will
+know that to-day when I tell her all."
+
+"When you tell her all?"
+
+"When I tell her all."
+
+"But you shall not do that."
+
+"I will.  It will be the beginning of the confession which I shall
+afterwards make to the world."
+
+"By Heaven you shall not do it.  Do you want to wreck her life?"
+
+Jaspar Hume's face was wrathful, and remained so till the other sank back
+in the chair with his forehead in his hands; but it softened as he saw
+this remorse and shame.  He began to see that Lepage had not clearly
+grasped the whole situation.  He said in quieter but still firm tones:
+"No, Lepage, that matter is between us two, and us alone.  She must never
+know--the world therefore must never know.  You did an unmanly thing; you
+are suffering a manly remorse.  Now let it end here--but I swear it
+shall," he said in sharp tones, as the other shook his head negatively:
+"I would have let you die at Manitou Mountain, if I had thought you would
+dare to take away your wife's peace--your children's respect."
+
+"I have no children; our baby died."
+
+Hume softened again.  "Can you not see, Lepage?  The thing cannot be
+mended.  I bury it all, and so must you.  You will begin the world again,
+and so shall I.  Keep your wife's love.  Henceforth you will deserve it."
+
+Lepage raised moist eyes to the other and said: "But you will take back
+the money I got for that?"
+
+There was a pause, then Hume replied: "Yes, upon such terms, times, and
+conditions as I shall hereafter fix.  You have no child, Lepage?" he
+gently added.
+
+"We have no child; it died with my fame."
+
+Hume looked steadily into the eyes of the man who had wronged him.
+"Remember, Lepage, you begin the world again.  I am going now.  By the
+memory of old days, good-bye."  He held out his hand.  Lepage took it,
+rose tremblingly to his feet, and said, "You are a good man, Hume.  Good-
+bye."
+
+The sub-factor turned at the door.  "If it will please you, tell your
+wife that I saved you.  Some one will tell her; perhaps I would rather--
+at least it would be more natural, if you did it."
+
+He passed out into the sunshine that streamed into the room and fell
+across the figure of Lepage, who murmured dreamily: "And begin the world
+again."
+
+Time passed.  A shadow fell across the sunlight that streamed upon
+Lepage.  He looked up.  There was a startled cry of joy, an answering
+exclamation of love, and Rose was clasped in her husband's arms.
+
+A few moments afterwards the sweet-faced woman said: "Who was that man
+who rode away to the north as I came up, Clive?  He reminded me of some
+one."
+
+"That was the leader of the White Guard, the man who saved me, Rose."
+He paused a moment and then solemnly said: "It was Jaspar Hume."
+
+The wife came to her feet with a spring.  "He saved you--Jaspar Hume!
+Oh, Clive!"
+
+"He saved me, Rose."
+
+Her eyes were wet: "And he would not stay and let me thank him!  Poor
+fellow, poor Jaspar Hume!  Has he been up here all these years?"
+
+Her face was flushed, and pain was struggling with the joy she felt in
+seeing her husband again.
+
+"Yes, he has been here all the time."
+
+"Then he has not succeeded in life, Clive!"  Her thoughts went back to
+the days when, blind and ill, Hume went away for health's sake, and she
+remembered how sorry then she felt for him, and how grieved she was that
+when he came back strong and well, he did not come near her or her
+husband, and offered no congratulations.  She had not deliberately
+wronged him.  She knew he cared for her: but so did Lepage.  A promise
+had been given to neither when Jaspar Hume went away; and after that she
+grew to love the successful, kind-mannered genius who became her husband.
+No real pledge had been broken.  Even in this happiness of hers, sitting
+once again at her husband's feet, she thought with tender kindness of the
+man who had cared for her eleven years ago; and who had but now saved her
+husband.
+
+"He has not succeeded in life," she repeated softly.  Looking down at
+her, his brow burning with a white heat, Lepage said: "He is a great man,
+Rose."
+
+"I am sure he is a good man," she added.
+
+Perhaps Lepage had borrowed some strength not all his own, for he said
+almost sternly: "He is a great man."
+
+His wife looked up half-startled and said: "Very well, dear; he is a
+good man--and a great man."
+
+The sunlight still came in through the open door.  The Saskatchewan
+flowed swiftly between its verdant banks, an eagle went floating away to
+the west, robins made vocal a solitary tree a few yards away, troopers
+moved backwards and forwards across the square, and a hen and her
+chickens came fluttering to the threshold.  The wife looked at the yellow
+brood drawing close to their mother, and her eyes grew wistful.  She
+thought of their one baby asleep in an English grave.  But thinking of
+the words of the captain of the White Guard, Lepage said firmly: "We will
+begin the world again."
+
+She smiled, and rose to kiss him as the hen and chickens hastened away
+from the door, and a clear bugle call sounded in the square.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+Eleven years have gone since that scene was enacted at Edmonton.
+
+A great gathering is dispersing from a hall in Piccadilly.  It has been
+drawn together to do honour to a man who has achieved a triumph in
+engineering science.  As he steps from the platform to go, he is greeted
+by a fusilade of cheers.  He bows calmly and kindly.  He is a man of
+vigorous yet reserved aspect; he has a rare individuality.  He receives
+with a quiet cordiality the personal congratulations of his friends.  He
+remains for some time in conversation with a royal duke, who takes his
+arm, and with him passes into the street.  The duke is a member of this
+great man's club, and offers him a seat in his brougham.  Amid the cheers
+of the people they drive away together.  Inside the club there are fresh
+congratulations, and it is proposed to arrange an impromptu dinner, at
+which the duke will preside.  But with modesty and honest thanks the
+great man declines.  He pleads an engagement.  He had pleaded this
+engagement the day before to a well-known society.  After his health is
+proposed, he makes his adieux, and leaving the club, walks away towards a
+West-end square.  In one of its streets he pauses, and enters a building
+called "Providence Chambers."  His servant hands him a cablegram.  He
+passes to his library, and, standing before the fire, opens it.  It
+reads: "My wife and I send congratulations to the great man."
+
+Jaspar Hume stands for a moment looking at the fire, and then says
+simply: "I wish poor old Bouche were here."  He then sits down and
+writes this letter:
+
+     My dear Friends,--Your cablegram has made me glad.  The day is over.
+     My latest idea was more successful than I even dared to hope; and
+     the world has been kind.  I went down to see your boy, Jaspar, at
+     Clifton last week.  It was his birthday, you know--nine years old,
+     and a clever, strong-minded little fellow.  He is quite contented.
+     As he is my god-child, I again claimed the right of putting a
+     thousand dollars to his credit in the bank,--I have to speak of
+     dollars to you people living in Canada--which I have done on his
+     every birthday.  When he is twenty-one he will have twenty-one
+     thousand dollars--quite enough for a start in life.  We get along
+     well together, and I think he will develop a fine faculty for
+     science.  In the summer, as I said, I will bring him over to you.
+     There is nothing more to say to-night except that I am as always,
+
+                    Your faithful and loving friend,
+                                                       JASPAR HUME.
+
+A moment after the letter was finished, the servant entered and announced
+"Mr. Late Carscallen."  With a smile and hearty greeting the great man
+and this member of the White Guard met.  It was to entertain his old
+arctic comrade that Jaspar Hume had declined to be entertained by society
+or club.  A little while after, seated at the table, the ex-sub-factor
+said: "You found your brother well, Carscallen?"
+
+The jaws moved slowly as of old.  "Ay, that, and a grand meenister, sir."
+
+"He wanted you to stay in Scotland, I suppose?"  "Ay, that, but there's
+no place for me like Fort Providence."
+
+"Try this pheasant.  And you are sub-factor now, Carscallen?"
+
+"There's two of us sub-factors--Jeff Hyde and myself.  Mr. Field is old,
+and can't do much work, and trade's heavy now."
+
+"I know.  I hear from the factor now and then.  And Gaspe Toujours, what
+of him?"
+
+"He went away three years ago, and he said he'd come back.  He never did
+though.  Jeff Hyde believes he will.  He says to me a hundred times,
+'Carscallen, he made the sign of the cross that he'd come back from Saint
+Gabrielle; and that's next to the Book with a papist.  If he's alive
+he'll come.'"
+
+"Perhaps he will, Carscallen.  And Cloud-in-the-Sky?"
+
+"He's still there, and comes in and smokes with Jeff Hyde and me, as he
+used to do with you; but he doesn't obey our orders as he did yours, sir.
+He said to me when I left: 'You see Strong-back, tell him Cloud-in-the-
+Sky good Injun--he never forget.  How!'"
+
+Jaspar Hume raised his glass with smiling and thoughtful eyes: "To Cloud-
+in-the-Sky and all who never forget!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARCH OF THE WHITE GUARD, PARKER ***
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