There was another sound--hard to place, that welled out of the dragging hours--a queer hum, so soft that one didn’t know whether it was a mile away or in his hair. It was like a woman going insane, but not violently. Hard to believe, but the sky began to show signs at last that another day was actually to be given to mankind. Elbert was making coffee in full daylight, when another outcry reached him--his first dawning suspicion as to the human quality of these tones. He stood up; his hand actually shook as he set down his tin cup, and his eye caught the black letters: ‘ARE YOU DOOMED?’ ‘How did you know?’ he muttered--and right then, the call again--vaguely like his own name. A minute later he was running across the Flats, his ears verifying as he ran: ‘Oh, Sartwell--this wa-a-ay!’ ahead, and somewhat above. ‘Yes, I’m coming!’ On the easy slope before his eyes, he saw a trail. ‘... turn to the left at the rotted cedar!’ The voice nearer, his own steps soundless for sixty or seventy feet along the punk of fallen timber; then a bald ridge which the winds had swept clean--a hand raised from the gravel--the old man crumpled there, his lips stretched white in a pained smile. ‘A long time gettin’ to you ... couldn’t make it last night. Where’s your canteen?’ ‘Back with my stuff--shall I get it?’ ‘No, I guess I can wait a little longer. We’ll get to the cabin. Mebby, leaning a whole lot, I can walk a bit.’ ‘What did you do? You haven’t been lying out here all night?’ ‘Yes. It happened in the tunnel yesterday ’bout noon--falling rock ... too big for the small of a man’s back. Started a trickle in there, somewhere--’ Did he mean in the mine or in his back? ‘Left me uncoupled. Too bad to spoil that vacation of yours this way.... Figured I could reach you by crawlin’--but played out--couldn’t make you hear in the night. Feared you might have gone back to town.’ Mr. Leadley couldn’t stand now, even with help. Elbert shouldered him at last; a long hard pull up to the cabin. No need for directions the latter part of the way, for a horse kept up an incessant nickering--like showers of gold coins falling upon a metal surface. ‘That’s Mamie. She ain’t been fed since yesterday mornin’,’ the old man apologized. ‘She never misses bestowin’ her welcomes, though it ain’t like her to be quite so noisy. She’s a real listener, too, Mamie is.’ A cabin in the midst of a group of great yellow pines. Elbert entered the open door, gasping with his burden. The old man’s tortured mouth still smiled up at him from the bunk. The room smelled like cigar-box wood. It was stuffed with chests, cupboards and cabinets--a hand-hewn room, with massive frame and heavy cedar shakes on the outside. Elbert brought water and started to unlace the nearest boot. A ghost of the old chuckle and the words: ‘No, nothing for me, ’til you go feed Mamie. She ain’t used to bein’ treated like this--’