Slowly and more slowly came the puffs of smoke from the captor's pipe; at last they ceased entirely. The lids of the youth's eyes closed, his breath came deep and regular. Beneath the blanket a muscle here and there twitched involuntarily, as in one who is very weary and asleep. An hour passed, an hour without a sound; then, looking closely, a spectator could have seen one of Tom Blair's eyes open and close furtively. Again it opened, and its mate as well--to remain so. For a minute, two minutes, they studied the companion face uncertainly, suspiciously, then savagely. Another minute, and the body had risen to hands and knees. Still Ben did not stir, still the great expanse of his chest rose and fell. Tom Blair was satisfied. Hand over hand, feeling his way like a cat, he advanced toward the prostrate figure. Despite his caution, the crust of the snow crackled once beneath his touch, and he paused, a soundless curse forming upon his lips; but the warning passed unheeded, and, bolder than before, he padded on. Eight feet he gained, then ten. His color heightened, the repressed arteries throbbed above the gaudy neckerchief, the skulking animal intensified in the tightened muscles of the temples. As many feet again; but a few more minutes--then liberty and life. The better to guard his movements, his gaze fell. Out and down went his right hand, then his left, as his lithe body slid forward. Again he glanced up, paused--and on the instant every muscle of his tense body went suddenly lax. Instead of the closed eyes and sleeping face he had expected, two steady eyes were giving him back look for look. There had not been a motion; the face was yet that of a sleeper; the chest still rose and fell steadily; but the eyes! Tom Blair's teeth ground each other like those of a dog with rabies. The suggestion of froth came to his lips. "Curse you!" he cried. "Curse you forever!" A moment they lay so, a moment wherein the last vestige of hope left the mind of the captive; but in it Ben Blair spoke no word. Maddening, immeasurably worse than denunciation, was that relentless silence. It was uncanny; and the bearded man felt the hairs of his head rising as the mane of a dog or a wolf lifts at a sound it does not understand. "Say something," he pleaded desperately. "Shoot me, kill me, do anything--but don't look at me like that!" and, fairly writhing, he crawled back to his blanket and buried his head in its depths.