Last Three Soldiers — The Golden Mill; Which Shows That A Mishap Is Not Always A Misfortune

CHAPTER XV THE GOLDEN MILL

Three years have come and gone since the forge was built, and the three misguided patriots, still loyal to their vow and to the thirty-three stars on their dear old flag, are sitting together in the fair sunlight of a Sabbath morning on the steps of the golden mill.

Tumbler the bear, very shaggy and faded as to his mangy coat, is sleeping comfortably on the dusty path that winds away to the house.

Coleman's tawny and curly beard and the black hair on Bromley's face have grown long and thick, and the down which beforetime was on Philip's lip and chin now flares out from his neck and jaws like a weak red flame.

Philip sits a little apart from the others, with the telescope in its leathern case strapped on his back, and there is a look of sadness in his face and in his wandering, downcast eyes.

Three years have wrought great changes in the plateau.

The harvests have been abundant, and at a little distance from where the men sit purple grapes hang in great clusters from the vines which have been grown from cuttings of that solitary plant which overhung the branch on the July day when they first came down its bank with the captain of the troopers and Andy the guide.

The building of the mill has been a work of time, and it is not yet a month since Bromley emptied the first yellow grist into the flaring hopper.

Two long years were spent in shaping the upper and the nether stones, and the new mill was rightly called "golden," for five thousand guineas from the mints of George the Fourth and good Queen Vic.

were melted in the forge and beaten into straps and bolts and rings and bands for the wooden machinery.

Gold glistens in the joints of the dripping-wheel, and gleams in the darkness at the bottom of the hopper, where the half of a priceless cavalry boot-leg distributes the corn between the grinding-stones.

The hopper itself is rimmed with gold, and the circular wooden box, rough hewn, that covers the stones is bolted and belted with the metal elsewhere called precious; and from the half-roof of oak shingles to the slab floor, gold without stint enriches and solidifies the structure.

It plates the handle and caps the top of the pole that shifts the water on to the wheel, and the half-door which shuts out Tumbler the bear swings on golden hinges and shuts with a golden hasp.

[Illustration: THE GOLDEN MILL.

] Healthy living and abundance of food have rounded the lusty brown limbs of the three soldiers and charged their veins with good red blood; but alas!

in the midst of the abundance of nature and the opulence of the golden mill, by reason of their tattered and scant covering they are pitiful objects to look upon as they sit together in the sunlight.

The smart uniforms with yellow facings are gone, and the long cavalry boots, and the jaunty caps with cross-sabers above the flat vizors; and so little remains of their former clothing that they might almost blush in the presence of the bear.

Lieutenant Coleman has some rags of blue flannel hanging about his broad shoulders, which flutter in the soft wind where they are not gathered under the waistband of a pair of new and badly made canvas trousers having the letters "U. S."

half lost in the clumsy seam of the right leg and a great "A" on the back, which sufficiently indicates that they have been made from the stiff cloth of the tent called "A," and that, if required, they could easily stand alone.

Such as they are, these trousers, on account of their newness and great durability, seem to be the pride of the colony.

They are certainly much smarter than Philip's, which are open with rents and patched with rags of various shades of blue, and tied about his legs with strings, and finally hung from his bare, tanned shoulders, under the telescope, by a single strip of canvas.

All three of the men have hard, bare feet, and the tunic or gown of faded blue cloth which hangs from Bromley's neck shows by its age that the overcoat-capes which were sacrificed to make it were sacrificed long ago.

This what-you-may-call-it is girded in at the waist by a coil of young grape-vine covered with tender green leaves, and fringed at bottom with mingled tatters of blue cloth and old yellow lining.

And this completes the costume of the dignified corporal who enlisted from Harvard in his junior year, except some ends of trousers which hang about his knees like embroidered pantalets.

With all their poverty of apparel, the persons of the three soldiers, and their clothing as far as practicable, are sweet and clean, which shows that at least two of them have lost none of that pride which prompted them to stay on the mountain, and which still keeps up their courage in the autumn of the good year '69. And now let us see what it is that ails Philip.

Many entries in the diary for the fifth summer on the mountain, which is just over, indicate that the conduct of Philip was shrouded in an atmosphere of mystery which his companions vainly tried to penetrate.

So early as March 12, 1869, we find it recorded: "Philip spends all his unemployed time in observations with the telescope."

In the following April and May, entries touching on this subject are most frequent, and Lieutenant Coleman and George Bromley have many conversations about Welton's peculiar conduct, and record many evidences of a state of mind which causes them much annoyance and some amusement.

"May 12. Requested Philip to remove one of the bee gums to the new bench.

Instead of complying with my request, he plugged the holes with grass, removed the stone and board from the top, and emptied a wooden bowl of lye into the hive, destroying both swarm and honey.

After this act of vandalism he entered the house, took down the telescope, and, slinging it over his shoulder, walked away in the direction of the point of rocks, whistling a merry tune as he went."

At another time he was asked to set the Slow-John in motion to crack a mess of hominy, and instead of spreading the corn on the rock he covered that receptacle with a layer of eggs, and hung the bucket on the long arm of the lever.

Such evidences of a profound absence of mind were constantly occurring;

and if they were not indications of his desire to return to the world, his secret observations with the telescope made it plain enough that he was absorbed in events outside the borders of Sherman Territory.

If questioned, he assigned all sorts of imaginary reasons for his conduct, and at the same time he held himself more and more aloof from his companions, to wander about the plateau alone.

During the previous winter, Philip had reported that one of the four young girls removed by the Confederates at the time of the capture of the officers had reappeared in the vicinity of the burned house.

This fact was soon forgotten by Coleman and Bromley, who were working like beavers, pecking the stones for the mill; but to Philip it was an event of absorbing interest.

Where were the others?

What sufferings and what indignities had the returned wanderer endured in her long absence, and what hardships and dangers had not she braved to reach her native valley again?

Gentle as Philip's nature was, he possessed in a marked degree the power to love and the hunger to be loved in return.

Occasionally a man in a dungeon or on a desert island, or in the shadow of a scaffold, has devoted himself to a one-sided passion in circumstances as baffling as those that hedged in Philip.

The sight of this lonely girl wandering back to the blackened ruin in the deserted clearing furnished the dolorous lady his knightly fancy craved.

A speck in the distance, he drew her to his arms in the magic lens, and consoled her with such words of sympathy and endearment as his fancy prompted.

In short, he had the old disease that makes a princess out of a poor girl in cow-skin shoes and a homespun frock, and had it all the worse that she kept her distance, as this one did.

In the long days when storms interrupted his observations, or fog hung over the valley, he wrote tender letters to his princess on prepared leaves of his prayer-book, in which the grave responses of the Litany ran in faint lines, like a water-mark, under the burning words on the paper.

He watched Jones and the kindly neighbors (not including Shifless) clearing away the wreckage and rebuilding the Smith house between the sturdy stone chimneys.

The new cabin was divided by an open covered passage, through which Philip could look with the glass to the sunlit field beyond, and watch the Princess Smith entering either of the doors opposite to each other in the sides of the passage.

This love of Philip's had sprung into being full fledged, without any stage of infant growth like an ordinary passion.

Besides its unsuspecting object, it was ample enough to take under its wings her wandering kinsfolk, dead or alive, and included the cow with the soundless bell which came to be milked in the evening by the hands of the princess herself, and then to crop the grass and lie in the dust of the road until morning.

From the time when she waved him a banner of smoke at sunrise until the firelight reddened on the cabin window, Philip came to linger almost constantly on the rocks, to the neglect of his share in the labors of the little community.

When planting-time came, and hands were in demand to spade up the soil, his companions for the first time secured and hid away the telescope.

For a day--for two days--Philip was uneasy, going and coming by himself, doing no work, speaking to no one, scarcely partaking of food.

At last the suspense and disappointment became unendurable, and going to Lieutenant Coleman, resting from his work in the shade of a spreading chestnut, he threw himself at his feet and begged for the return of the telescope, revealing for the first time the nature of his infatuation.

His lips once opened, poor Philip ran on in a rhapsody so fantastic and incoherent that the diseased state of his mind was at the same time made apparent.

In the diary for July 6, Lieutenant Coleman writes: "An unspeakable calamity has fallen on the dwellers in Sherman Territory.

Reason has been blotted out in the mind of our companion Philip, and now we are but two in the company of an amiable madman."

In view of Philip's malady Lieutenant Coleman felt it wise to humor him with the telescope, and to try the effect of more active sympathy by joining him in his observations.

After an eager examination of the clearing in the valley, "Gone!

Gone!"

he cried in a voice of despair.

"You have driven away my princess!

You hate her--you and the other one!

You hate me!

I'm not wise enough for your company--you and the other one.

Give me back my princess--give me back--" Taking the glass from his trembling hand, Coleman leveled it on the house in the clearing; and, happily, there stood the woman, midway of the passage, and on the point of advancing into the light.

"Take her back, dear Philip," he said, returning him the telescope.

"We will never steal her again--I and the other one.

See, there she is!"

With a quick movement Philip looked, and without a spoken word he fell a-laughing and crooning in his delight, in a way so unnatural and so uncanny that it was sadder to see than his excitement.

The only chance of reclaiming Philip seemed to be in the direction of feigning sympathy with and interest in his delusion, trusting to time, in the absence of opposition, to bring him back to reason.

Never after this exhibition of petulance on the rocks with Lieutenant Coleman did he show the slightest tendency to violence.

When he came in on that particular evening, the lieutenant took his hand, and in a few friendly words told him how glad he was that all was well and that the lost was found, and ordered the flag run up in honor of the occasion.

Philip looked in a dazed way at the flag, showing that that emblem had lost its old power to stir him with enthusiasm.

All that summer, when his expert advice was sorely needed, poor infatuated Philip took no more interest in the construction of the golden mill than he took in the spots on the moon.

He was as ignorant of the affairs of Sherman Territory as the Princess Smith, that plain, ignorant working-girl in the valley, was of his existence.

So week after week, and month after month, through the long summer and into the sad autumn days, his companions kept a melancholy watch on Philip, who wandered to and fro on the mountain, with the telescope in its leathern case strapped over his bare shoulders, as we saw him first in the shadow of the golden mill.

Scantily as the three soldiers were clad at that time, they still had their long blue overcoats to protect them from the cold of winter, and broken shoes to cover their feet; and so in the short December days poor Philip, grown nervous and haggard with want of sleep, strapped the telescope outside his coat, and wandered about the point of rocks.

The morning of January 10, as it dawned on the three forgotten soldiers,--if it may be said to have dawned at all,--cast a singular light on the mountain-top.

It had come on to thaw, and the time of the winter avalanches was at hand.

The sky overhead was of a colorless density which was no longer a dome; and it seemed to Philip, as he stood on the rocks, as if he could stretch out his hand and touch it.

Somewhere in its depth the sun was blotted out.

Ragged clouds settled below the mountain-top, and then, borne on an imperceptible wind, a sea of fog swallowed up the clouds and blotted out the valley and the ranges beyond, even as it had blotted out the sun, leaving Sherman Territory an island drifting through space.

Philip closed the telescope with a moan, and replaced it in its leathern case.

Even the trees on the island, and the rocks heaped in ledges, grew gray and indistinct, and presently the thick mist resolved itself into a vertical rain falling gently on the melting snow.

The strokes of an ax in the direction of the house had a muffled sound, like an automatic buoy far out at sea.

Philip turned with another sigh, and took the familiar path in the direction of the ax, groping his way in the mist as a mountaineer feels the trail in the night with his feet.

The sound of the chopping ceases, and a great stillness broods on the mountain.

Evidently the chopper has sought shelter from the rain.

Brown leaves begin to show where the snow has disappeared on the path, so familiar to the feet of the wanderer that no sound should be needed to toll him home.

But to-day, while his feet are on the mountain-top, his aching heart is in the valley.

She has gone forever from the arms of the lover she never saw.

He sees before him the wedding of yesterday, and in his gentleness he is incapable of hating even his successful rival.

He is capable only of grief.

Bitter tears fall on his breast and on his clasped hands.

A great aching is in his throat, and a dimness in his suffused eyes.

He throws his arms out and presses his temples with his clenched hands, and mutters with a choking sound, as he walks.

He does not know that the rain is falling on his upturned face.

He turns to go back.

He changes his mind and advances.

He is no longer in the path.

He has no thought of where he goes.

The blades of dead grass, and the dry seeds and fragments of leaves, cling thick upon the sodden surface of his tattered boots.

He strides on absently over the ground, parting the fog and cooling his feverish face in the rain; and every step leads him nearer to the boulder face of the mountain where the great avalanches are getting ready to fall a thousand feet into the Cove below.

The events of yesterday go before him.

He sees the procession come out of the church house, the women in one group and the men following in another, and he and she going hand in hand in the advance.

He feels the sunshine of yesterday on his head and the misery in his heart.

Then it is night, and he sees the lights of the frolic at the cabin in the clearing.

He is no longer the cheerful, happy Philip of other years, but a weakened, distracted shadow of that other Philip staggering on through the rain.

He has forgotten his soldier comrades and the meaning of his life on the mountain.

He has forgotten even his patriotism and the existence of the flag with thirty-three stars.

Sherman Territory is receding under his feet, and the grief that he has created for himself so industriously and nursed so patiently is leading him on.

A blotch of shadows to the right assumes the ghostly form of spreading trees, the naked branches blending softly in the blanket of the fog.

The gnarled chestnuts, that looked like berry-bushes while they waited at the deserted cabin on that first night for the moon to go down, give no voice of warning, and Philip comes steadily on, with the telescope strapped to his back and the load in his heart.

Under his heedless feet the dead weeds and the sodden leaves give way to the slippery rock.

[Illustration: PHILIP ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE.

] For a moment the slender figure crossed by the telescope is massed against the mist overhanging the Cove.

Then there is a despairing cry and a futile clutching at the cruel ledge, and, in the silence that follows, the vertical rain, out of the blanket of the fog, goes on shivering its tiny lances on the slippery rocks.

CHAPTER XVI WHICH SHOWS THAT A MISHAP IS NOT ALWAYS A MISFORTUNE

It was still early in the day when Philip fell over the boulder face of the mountain; and when the chopping which he had heard through the fog ceased at the house, Bromley had indeed gone in, but not for shelter from the rain.

He had gone to warn Lieutenant Coleman of the absence of their half-demented comrade and of the peril he ran in wandering about on the mountain in the fog.

They felt so sure of finding him near the point of rocks that they went together in that direction; but before they started Philip had wandered from the path, and by the time they reached the rocks he had put the house behind him and was walking in the direction of the Cove.

Finding no trace of him there, and seeing the dense mist which covered the valley and made observation impossible, they separated and went off in opposite ways, calling him by name, "Philip!

Philip!"

and as they got farther and farther from each other, "Philip!

Philip!"

came back to each faintly through the fog and the rain.

They made their way to such points as he might have found shelter under, but their calls brought no response.

They knew that in his peculiar state of mind he might hear their voices and make no reply, and in this was at last their only hope of his safety as they continued their search.

At twelve o'clock a wind set in from the east, redoubling the rain, but rapidly dispelling the fog.

In an hour every place where he could possibly have concealed himself had been searched, and with one mind they came back to the point of rocks.

They lay out on the wet ledge and looked over with fear and trembling, half expecting to see his mangled body below.

They could see clearly to the foot of the precipice, and there was nothing there but the smooth, trackless snow;

and then when they drew back they looked in each other's faces and knew for the first time how much they loved Philip and how much each was to the other.

They were almost certain now that he had fallen over one face of the mountain or the other.

Yesterday they could have followed his track in the thin snow, but now the rain, which was still falling heavily, had obliterated one after melting what remained of the other.

They went together down the ladders, and for its whole length along the base of that ledge.

When they returned to the plateau, Lieutenant Coleman and Bromley were tired, and soaked with the rain, and crushed with the awful certainty that Philip had fallen over the great rock face into the Cove.

They could neither eat nor sleep as long as there was a possibility of discovering any clue to his fate; and so in time they came to the slippery rock in front of the station, where the heel of his boot or the sharp edge of the telescope had made a scratch on the stone that the rain was powerless to wash out.

It was no use to call his name after that dreadful plunge, the very thought of which tied their tongues to that extent that the two men stood in silence over their discovery; and when they could learn no more they came away hand in hand, without uttering a word.

This was indeed the point where Philip had gone over the great rock;

but by a strange good fortune his body had plunged into a mass of rotten snow fifty feet from the brink of the precipice.

It was the snow of the avalanche making ready to fall; and through this first bank his body broke its way, falling from point to point for another fifty feet, until he lay unconscious over the roots of the great icicles which hung free from the rounded ledge below him, dripping their substance nine hundred feet into the Cove.

When he came to himself, chilled and sore after his great fall, the moon was shining softly on the snow about him and sparkling on the ice below.

He had no recollection of his fall, and but the vaguest remembrance of what had gone before.

It was rather as if he had dreamed that he had fallen upon the avalanche, and when he had first opened his eyes upon the snow about him and above him, he tried to reason with himself that no dream could be so real.

He remembered vaguely the autumn days by the golden mill, and he knew that it was not winter at all; and yet this was real snow in which he lay bruised and helpless.

He realized that he was almost frozen, and his clothing, that had been wet, was now stiffening on his limbs.

The great shock had restored his shattered mind, leaving a wide blank, it is true, to be filled in for the best part of the year that was past.

He was himself, again now, but where it was not at first so clear.

There was nothing to be seen above beyond the snow which hung over him; but when he turned his sore body so as to look away from the mountain-side, his eyes rested on the long white roof of the Cove post-office, as he had seen it often before from the top of the plateau.

Philip knew now that he was in the very heart of the avalanche.

He lay on the very brink of the ice which might fall with the heat of another day's sun.

At first he began to cry out for help; but his voice was such a small thing in the mass of snow against the great rock.

And then he thought of the people from the hills who would come at noon of the next day to watch by the post-office to see him fall--him, Philip Welton!

And then he thought of Coleman and Bromley, who must have given him up for dead;

and even of his uncle at the old mill, with more of desire than he had ever felt for him before.

He tried to drag himself a little from the icy brink; but his legs and arms were numb and stiffened with the cold.

He began to clap his nerveless hands and stimulate the circulation of his blood by such movements as he could make.

He had an instinctive feeling that the avalanche had been trembling yesterday where it clung to the great, black, vertical stain on the face of the boulder just below the trees that looked like berry-bushes from the road in the Cove.

He knew that it would not fall during the night.

He had no recollection of the rain.

He knew that more heat of the sun was yet required to loosen it for the great plunge.

It was freezing now, and every hour added solidity to the surface of the snow; and yet as he gained the power he feared to move, as the workman distrusts the strong scaffold about the tall steeple because of its great height from the ground.

Above him, ten feet away, he could see the hole in the snow through which he knew he must have fallen; and as he thought of the fearful shoot his body would have made, clearing even the great ledge of icicles, if the surface of that bank had not been rotted by some cause, his limbs were almost paralyzed with terror.

The thought helped to stir the sluggish blood in his veins, and he shrank, rather than moved, a little from the awful brink where he lay.

Gradually he rose to his feet and looked about him.

The Cove post-office, showing its white roof through the naked trees that looked like berry-bushes in their turn, far, far below him, fascinated him until he felt a mad impulse to leap over the icicles to oblivion.

Instead of yielding to this impulse, however, he covered his eyes with his hands until he found strength to turn his back on the tiny object that terrified him.

If he cried out, his voice, against the rock for a sounding-board, might awaken the sleeping postmaster before his comrades on the plateau.

Even in that case no help could reach him from below across the bridgeless gorge; and even if his comrades were above him on the rocks, they could do nothing for him.

[Illustration: "PHILIP COULD SEE THE HOLE IN THE SNOW THROUGH WHICH HE KNEW HE MUST HAVE FALLEN."

] Should he wait there to meet certain death in the avalanche to-morrow or the nest day?

He thought of the cool courage of Bromley, and wondered what he would do if he were there in his place.

As long as there was a foothold to be gained, he knew Bromley would climb higher, if it were only to fall the farther, and he felt a thrill of pride in the dauntless nerve of his comrade.

This thought prompted him to do something for himself, and he began by whipping his arms around his body, keeping his back resolutely on the small post-office, and trying to forget its dizzy distance below him.

As he grew warmer and stronger, he felt more courage.

It was impossible to reach the hole in the snow through which he had come, for the broken sides separated in the wrong way from the perpendicular.

He was not a fly to crawl on a ceiling.

A few yards to his right, as he stood facing the mountain, the bank through which his body had broken its way made a smooth curve to the ledge where the icicles began.

As he looked at the great polished surface of the snow, the thought came to him that nothing in all the world but the soft moonlight could cling there.

Hopeless as the passage by the bank was, he could reach it; and the feeling that it led away to the region above prompted him to pick his way along the narrow ledge until he could touch with his hand the smooth surface of the bank.

He could only touch it with his hand, for the edge curved over his head as he stood alongside it.

He felt that the bank was hard; he was unable to break its crust with his hand; and he knew that every moment it was growing harder.

His strong knife was in his pocket.

He drew out this and opened it with his stiff fingers.

Then he began to cut his way under the bank.

Beyond the first surface the snow yielded readily to his efforts; and as it fell under his feet he made his way diagonally upward until at the end of half an hour, as it seemed to him, he broke the crust of the great bank and pushed his head through into the fair moonlight.

He looked up at the glaring steep above him, and it was beyond his power not to take one look back at the tiny post-office below him.

If he had not been safely wedged in the bank, it would have been his last look in life.

As it was, he shrank trembling into the snow, and for a whole minute he never moved a muscle.

Fortunately for his shattered nerves, it was not necessary to go out upon the surface of the bank, which was considerably less than perpendicular.

He had only to cut away the crust with his knife, and so gradually work his way upward in a soft trench, leaving only his head and shoulders above the crust.

Philip felt a strange exultation in this new power to advance upward, and all his sturdy strength came to his aid in his extremity.

He felt no disposition to look back at the trail he knew he was leaving in the snow.

He was certain now of gaining the top of the bank, but what lay beyond he knew not.

Half the distance he had fallen would still be above him.

He was almost up now; but at the very top of the bank there was another curl of the snow, and once more he had to burrow under like a mole.

When Philip's head did appear again on the surface, it was not so light as before, and with his first glance around he saw that the moon was already sinking below the opposite ridge.

He was almost within reach of another hole to his left; and by its appearance, and by the distance he had come, he knew it was not the same which he had seen from below, and alongside it the last rays of the moon glinted on the brass barrel of the telescope attached to its broken strap.

How it had come there he had no idea, any more than he had how he had come to be lying on the ledge above the icicles where he had found himself a few hours before.

It was the old familiar telescope of the station, through which the three soldiers had looked at the prisoners and at old Shifless in the valley, and it made him glad as if he had met an old friend.

He stretched out his hand to draw it to him.

Instead of securing it, his clumsy fingers rolled it from him on the smooth snow, and as he looked at it the telescope turned on end and disappeared through the hole in the bank.

In the awful stillness on the side of the mountain, he heard it strike twice.

It was nothing to Philip now whether it fell in advance or waited to go down with the avalanche.

And just as this thought had passed through his mind, and as he turned his eyes to the side of the cliff above him, the far-away sound of metal striking on stone broke sharply on his ear, and he knew that the telescope had been smashed to atoms on the rocks in the Cove bottom.

From where he crouched now on the snow he could see the edge of the plateau above him, and as near as he could judge it was rather less than fifty feet away.

The smooth rock was cased in thin ice--so thin that he believed he could see the black storm-stain underneath.

It was growing dark now, and after all his toil and hope he had only gained a little higher seat on the back of the avalanche.

He saw with half a glance that it would be impossible to climb higher.

He heard the wind whistle through the branches of the dwarfed old chestnut-trees over his head; and as the cold was so still about him, he knew that it was an east wind.

He could go nearer to the ledge, but he could gain no foothold on the rock.

In the midst of his cruel disappointment and his awful dread of the sun which would come to melt the snow next day, he felt a greater terror than he had felt when he had first found himself down below.

His companions might have gone mad and thrown him over the rock.

It was all a dark mystery to poor Philip.

He could barely see about him now.

Even the sun would be better than this darkness.

It might be cold to-morrow.

At any rate, it would be afternoon before the sun, however warm, could get in its deadly work on the avalanche.

It never occurred to him that he was nearly famished, and he must have slept some where he sat in the snow, for he dreamed that the people were gathered at the post-office to see him fall, and a crash like the roar of battle brought him to his senses with a start.

The next time he awoke, the bright sun was indeed shining, and he was stiff with the cold, as he had found himself at first.

He was hungry, too, as he had never been hungry before, and the fear of starvation seemed more dreadful to him than the dread of the avalanche.

As he lay there in his weakened state, his ears were alert for the faintest sound.

He thought he heard a movement on the ledge above him, and then he heard voices clear and distinct.

They were the voices of Coleman and Bromley.

"Poor Philip!"

he heard them say.

At first he was unable to speak in his excitement, and then he raised his voice with all the strength of his lungs, and cried, "Help!

Help!"

"Is that you, Philip?"

"Yes, George!

Yes!

Help!"

By questioning him they learned what his situation was, and the distance he lay from the top of the ledge; for they could gain no position where they could see him.

They bade him keep up his courage until they came again.

It was indeed a long time before he heard their voices again speaking to him, and then down over the icy rock came a knotted rope made of strips of the canvas that remained of the "A" tent.

At the end of the life-line, as it dangled nearer and nearer, were two strong loops like a breeches-buoy.

Philip felt strong again when he had the line in his hand, and thrusting his legs through the loops, he called out to hoist away.

As he went up, up, he clung fast with his hands to the strip of canvas; but he was too weak to keep himself away from the rock with his feet, so he bumped against it until he was drawn over the surface of the same stone he had slipped on the morning before.

He saw the kind faces of his two comrades, and then he sank unconscious on the firm earth at their feet.

CHAPTER XVII