“We’ve just got enough for one more good meal,” said Roberts, in a tremulous voice. “There’s no game around here, either. Guide, you must try to find a way out of this before dark, so we can start early in the morning.” Without speaking, the guide obeyed. It was dark when he returned. The men were sitting by the camp-fire, eating their supper. The dog still lay by his master, from whom even hunger could not tempt him. The three men looked at the guide. He sat down and took his cup of coffee in silence. “Well,” said Darnell, at last, “can we go on?” “Yes,” said the guide, slowly; “we can. In some places there’ll be only a few inches’ foothold; an’ we’ll hev to hang on to bushes up above us, with the river in some places hundreds o’ feet below; but we can do it, ’f we don’t get rattled an’ lose our heads.” There was a deep and significant silence. Then Brotherton said, with white lips, “Do you mean that we can’t take _him_?” “That’s what I mean.” The guide spoke deliberately. He could not lift his eyes. Some of the coffee spilled as he lifted the cup to his lips. “We can’t take a thing, ’cept our hands and feet,—not even a blanket. It’ll be life an’ death to do it, then.” There was another silence. At last Darnell said: “Then it is for us to decide whether we shall leave him to die alone while we save ourselves, or stay and die with him?” “Yes,” said the guide. “There is positively not the faintest chance of getting him out with us?” “By God, no!” burst forth the guide, passionately. “It seems like puttin’ the responsibility on me, but you want the truth, an’ that’s it. He can’t be got out. It’s leave him an’ save ourselves, or stay with him an’ starve.” After a long while Roberts said, in a low voice: “He’s unconscious. He wouldn’t know we had gone.” “He cannot possibly live three days, under any circumstances,” said Brotherton. “Mortification has already begun in his legs.” “Good God!” exclaimed Darnell, jumping up and beginning to walk rapidly forth and back, before the fire. “I must go home, boys! My wife—when I think of her, I am afraid of losing my reason! When I think what she is suffering——” Brotherton looked at him. Then he sunk his face into both his hands. He, too, had a wife. The guide put down his coffee; large tears came into his honest eyes. He had no wife, but there was one—— Roberts got up suddenly. He had the look of a tortured animal in his eyes. “Boys,” he said, “my wife is dead. My life doesn’t matter so much, but—I’ve three little girls! I _must_ get back, somehow!” The sick man spoke. They all started guiltily, and looked toward him. “Yes, yes, Polly,” he said, soothingly, “I know how you worried about me. I know how you set strainin’ your eyes out the window day an’ night, watchin’ fer me. But now I’m home again, an’ it’s all right. I guess you prayed, Polly; an’ I guess God heard you.... There’s a boy fer you! He knows me, too.”