“Never mind telling it just now,” he said in a gruff voice, but with real gentleness; “get a bite t’eat first and then let her go afterwards.  Better have a horn of whisky too.  It ain’t all packed yet, I guess.”

“Couldn’t eat or drink a thing,” cried the other.  “Good Lord, don’t you see, man, I want to talk to someone first?  I want to get it out of me to someone who can answer—­answer.  I’ve had nothing but trees to talk with for three days, and I can’t carry it alone any longer.  Those cursed, silent trees—­I’ve told it ’em a thousand times.  Now, just see here, it was this way.  When we started out from camp—­”

He looked fearfully about him, and we realised it was useless to stop him.  The story was bound to come, and come it did.

Now, the story itself was nothing out of the way; such tales are told by the dozen round any camp fire where men who have knocked about in the woods are in the circle.  It was the way he told it that made our flesh creep.  He was near the truth all along, but he was skimming it, and the skimming took off the cream that might have saved his soul.

Of course, he smothered it in words—­odd words, too—­melodramatic, poetic, out-of-the-way words that lie just on the edge of frenzy.  Of course, too, he kept asking us each in turn, scanning our faces with those restless, frightened eyes of his, “What would you have done?” “What else could I do?” and “Was that my fault?” But that was nothing, for he was no milk-and-water fellow who dealt in hints and suggestions; he told his story boldly, forcing his conclusions upon us as if we had been so many wax cylinders of a phonograph that would repeat accurately what had been told us, and these questions I have mentioned he used to emphasise any special point that he seemed to think required such emphasis.

The fact was, however, the picture of what had actually happened was so vivid still in his own mind that it reached ours by a process of telepathy which he could not control or prevent.  All through his true-false words this picture stood forth in fearful detail against the shadows behind him.  He could not veil, much less obliterate, it.  We knew; and, I always thought, he knew that we knew.

The story itself, as I have said, was sufficiently ordinary.  Jake and himself, in a nine-foot canoe, had upset in the middle of a lake, and had held hands across the upturned craft for several hours, eventually cutting holes in her ribs to stick their arms through and grasp hands lest the numbness of the cold water should overcome them.  They were miles from shore, and the wind was drifting them down upon a little island.  But when they got within a few hundred yards of the island, they realised to their horror that they would after all drift past it.

It was then the quarrel began.  Jake was for leaving the canoe and swimming.  Rushton believed in waiting till they actually had passed the island and were sheltered from the wind.  Then they could make the island easily by swimming, canoe and all.  But Jake refused to give in, and after a short struggle—­Rushton admitted there was a struggle—­got free from the canoe—­and disappeared without a single cry.