He afterwards fancied that he spent most of the day crawling between the fire and the thicket, but was never very sure of anything he did just then.  Nor did he feel hungry, though now and then he clawed up and sucked a handful of snow, but he remembered that he was lying in the smoke when the bush grew dimmer and the red blaze more brilliant as darkness crept down.  Presently he fancied that something broke through the monotone of the river, and after listening to it vacantly groped for the rifle.  He clutched it, and raising himself a trifle with difficulty, blinked at the darkness that hemmed in the fire until footsteps came out of it.  They were not furtive, but apparently those of somebody coming straight towards the light in haste.  Alton smiled curiously, and wriggled until he was out of the strongest light, and found support for the barrel of the rifle.  Then a cry came out of the shadows, “Is it you, Harry?”

Alton did not answer, for his voice seemed to fail him, and he blinked at the man who bent over him.

“You have been a long while, Charley, and I came very near putting a bullet into you just now,” he said.

“Well,” said Seaforth, “I did my best, and Tom’s coming along behind me.  What are you doing here anyway?”

Alton glanced at him bewilderedly.  “I don’t quite know, but I got the deer.  It’s somewhere around here,” said he.

Seaforth’s face grew suddenly grave as he stopped and shook his comrade, then let his hand drop as he saw a red trickle spreading across the crusted overalls.

“Good Lord!  Are you hurt, Harry, and what’s all this?” he said.

Alton glanced up at him with dimming eyes.  “The thing’s broken out again.  I think it’s blood,” he said, and while his arm slipped from under him, slowly rolled over with his feet in the smoking fern.

CHAPTER XX

THE NICKED BULLET

The grey daylight was creeping into the little tent and Alton sleeping at last when Seaforth rose to his feet.  His eyes were heavy with the long night’s watch which had followed a twelve hours’ march, and he shivered as he went out.  The morning was bitterly cold, and a fire burned redly outside the tent, but there was no sign of Okanagan, who had joined him during the night, nor had any preparations for breakfast been made.

“Tom,” he twice called softly, but only the moaning of the branches overhead answered him, and with a little gesture of impatience he strode into the bush.

Seaforth had no definite purpose, but he was glad to stretch his stiffened limbs, and instinctively turned towards the spot where he had found his comrade.  As he approached it he stopped, and watched the dim moving object that caught his eyes with some bewilderment.  Tom of Okanagan was kneeling beside a thicket with a stick in his hand, and apparently holding it carefully in line with a fir.  After moving once or twice