“It doesn't seem to be a matter of choice, does it? If you were not meant to tell me--what you have partly told me already--where is there any meaning in our being here at all? Let us have some excuse for this senseless accident. Do you believe much in accidents? How foolish”--Paul sighed--“for you and me to be afraid of each other! Two men who have parted with everything but the privilege of speaking the truth!” The packer raised himself in his bunk slowly, like one in pain. He looked long at the listless figure crouching by the fire; then he sank back again with a low groan. “What was it you heared me say? Come!” “I can't give you the exact words. The words were nothing. Haven't you watched the sparks blow up, at night, when the wind goes searching over the ashes of an old camp-fire? It was the fever made you talk, and your words were the sparks that showed where there had been fire once. Perhaps I had no right to track you by your own words when you lay helpless, but I couldn't always leave you. Now I'd like to have my share of that--whatever it was--that hurt you so, at One Man Station.” “You ought to been a lawyer,” said the packer, releasing his breath. There was less strain in his voice. It broke with feeling. “You put up a mighty strong case for your way of looking at it. I don't say it's best. There, if you will have it! Sonny--my son! It--it's like startin' a snow-slide.” The sick man broke down and sobbed childishly. “Take it quietly! Oh, take it quietly!” Paul shivered. “I have known it a long time.” Hours later they were still awake, the packer in his bunk, Paul in his blankets by the winking brands. The pines were moving, and in pauses of the wind they could hear the incessant soft crowding of the snow. “When they find us here in the spring,” said the packer humbly, “it won't matter much which on us was 'Mister' and which was 'John.'” “Are you thinking of that!” Paul answered with nervous irritation. “I thought you had lived in the woods long enough to have got rid of all that nonsense!” “I guess there was some of it where you've been living.” “We are done with all that now. Go to sleep,--Father.” He pronounced the word conscientiously to punish himself for dreading it. The darkness seemed to ring with it and give it back to him ironically. “Father!” muttered the pines outside, and the snow, listening, let fall the word in elfin whispers. Paul turned over desperately in his blankets. “Father!” he repeated out loud. “Do _you_ believe it? Does it do you any good?” “I wouldn't distress myself, one way or t' other, if it don't come natural,” the packer spoke, out of his corner in the darkness. “Wait till you can feel to say it. The word ain't nothing.” “But do you feel it? Is it any comfort to you at all?” “I ain't in any hurry to feel it. We'll get there. Don't worry. And s'pose we don't! We're men. Man to man is good enough for me.”