All the while Abington sat by the fire and waited for Bill, he felt the cold malevolence of the soul behind those staring eyes and the close-shut lips. Though the fancy did not trouble him, it seemed too that the shades of those savage ones of long ago hovered inquisitively in the shadows that fringed the firelight; timid wild folk who dared not walk boldly among these strange men of a later age, yet lingered, curious to see what grim drama was about to be played here where the stage was set with the somber trappings more suited to an old Greek tragedy than of everyday life. The return of Bill, heavily burdened and with the white light dancing impishly before him, did not spoil the illusion but served instead to deepen it; for the crudely efficient surgery was completed in silence or curt undertones that held a sinister quality of ominous reserve. The white light painted grotesque shadows on the brown-sandstone cliff beside them, gigantic caricatures of men in gruesome pantomime that might have been the enactment of a torture scene, with two fiends performing demoniac rites over some luckless victim. Bill afterward boiled coffee and mixed a bannock in which he stirred small fragments of cold fried bacon left over from his supper. Abington ate ravenously, and afterward the two smoked beside the fire, Jack Huntley lying wrapped in their two blankets. As the Great Dipper tilted more and more toward the polestar, fever unlocked the stubborn lips of the wounded man and he muttered endlessly, his sordid secrets betrayed with pitiless repetition. All about millions in carnetite, he babbled, and how “they” would never get it away from him, because he was too smart for them; it was crazy talk, interrupted whenever Abington bent over him ministering to his comfort, doing what he could to allay the fever. * * * * * Beside the fire Bill Jonathan brooded, lifting his head to listen when the fellow’s delirium seemed to take a different turn, or some movement roused him from his somber meditations. Dawn was beginning to work its daily miracle on hills and sky when Bill replenished the fire and turned to Abington, who was sitting with lean fingers clasped around his knees and a cold pipe dangling from between his teeth. “What do you think of the case, professor? Think he’ll get well, all right?” Bill’s tone made the question seem only the preliminary to what was really in his mind. Abington yawned. “No reason why he shouldn’t, Bill. I recovered the bullet; it’s a clean wound and no vital organs were injured. He should get well without much trouble--if proper care is used.” Bill turned away without a word, though it was plain that his mind was full of troubled thoughts. They cooked breakfast and ate in silence. The wounded man had fallen asleep, with the sunlight softly warm on his blanketed shoulder.