Will hurried along, but his knees grew weak again and objects swam before his eyes. He had not yet recovered his strength fully after passing through the tremendous test of mental and physical endurance, when he lay so long in that little hollow in the side of the mountain. The Little Giant was about to thrust out a hand and help sustain him, but he did not do so, remembering that it would hurt the lad's pride. The gold hunter, uneducated, spending his life in the wilds, had nevertheless a delicacy of feeling worthy of the finest flower of civilization. Will was near to the fire now and the pleasant aroma of broiling venison came to him. Boyd and Brady were moving about the flames, engaged in pleasant homely tasks, and all his strength returned. Once more his head was steady and his muscles strong. "I made a long stay," he called cheerfully to them, "too long, I fear, nor do I bring a mountain sheep back with me." The sharp eyes of the hunter and the trapper saw at once in his pallid face and exaggerated manner that something unusual had happened, but they pretended to take no notice. "Did you see any sheep?" asked Boyd. "Yes," replied the lad, "I had a splendid view of a grand ram, standing high on a jutting stone over the great valley." "What became of him?" "I don't know. I became so busy with something else that I forgot all about him, and he must have gone away in the twilight. An Indian in a niche above me began firing arrows at me, and I had to stick close in a little hollow in the stone so he couldn't reach me. If the Little Giant hadn't come along, and made another of his wonderful shots I suppose I'd be staying there for a week to come." "Tom can shoot a little," said Boyd, divining the whole story from the lad's few sentences, "and he also has a way of shooting at the right time. Now, you sit down here, Will, and eat these steaks I'm broiling, and I'll give you a cup of coffee, too, just one cup though, because we're sparing our coffee as much as we can now." Will ate and drank with a great appetite, and then he told more fully of his adventure with the foe whom he had never seen until the Little Giant's bullet sent him spinning into the void. "He'd have got you," said Brady thoughtfully, "if Tom hadn't come along." "You know we wuz worried 'bout him stayin' so long," said the Little Giant, "an' so I went out to look fur him. It wuz lucky that I took his glasses along, or I might never hev seen him or the Sioux. I don't want to brag, but that wuz one o' my happy thoughts." "You had nothing to do with taking the glasses, Tom Bent," said Brady seriously. "Why, it wuz my own idee!" "Not at all. The idea was in your head but it was not put there by your own mind. It was put there by the Infinite, and it was put there because Will's time had not yet come. You were merely an instrument, Tom Bent."