The next morning the Colonel, who had been kept awake half the night by what he had been thinking was neuralgia in his eyes, woke late, hearing the Boy calling: 

“I say, Kentucky, aren’t you ever goin’ to get up?”

“Get up?” said the Colonel.  “Why should I, when it’s pitch-dark?”

“What?”

“Fire clean out, eh?” But he smelt the tea and bacon, and sat up bewildered, with a hand over his smarting eyes.  The Boy went over and knelt down by him, looking at him curiously.

“Guess you’re a little snow-blind, Colonel; but it won’t last, you know.”

“Blind!”

“No, no, only snow-blind.  Big difference;” and he took out his rag of a handkerchief, got some water in a tin cup, and the eyes were bathed and bandaged.

“It won’t last, you know.  You’ll just have to take it easy for a few days.”

The Colonel groaned.

For the first time he seemed to lose heart.  He sat during breakfast with bandaged eyes, and a droop of the shoulders, that seemed to say old age had come upon him in a single night.  The day that followed was pretty dark to both men.  The Boy had to do all the work, except the monotonous, blind, pushing from behind, in whatever direction the Boy dragged the sled.

Now, snow-blindness is not usually dangerous, but it is horribly painful while it lasts.  Your eyes swell up and are stabbed continually by cutting pains; your head seems full of acute neuralgia, and often there is fever and other complications.  The Colonel’s was a bad case.  But he was a giant for strength and “sound as a dollar,” as the Boy reminded him, “except for this little bother with your eyes, and you’re a whole heap better already.”

At a very slow rate they plodded along.

They had got into a region where there was no timber; but, as they couldn’t camp without a fire, they took an extra rest that day at four o’clock, and regaled themselves on some cold grub.  Then they took up the line of march again.  But they had been going only about half an hour when the Colonel suddenly, without warning, stopped pushing the sled, and stood stock-still on the trail.  The Boy, feeling the removal of the pressure, looked round, went back to him, and found nothing in particular was the matter, but he just thought he wouldn’t go any further.

“We can camp here.”

“No, we can’t,” says the Boy; “there isn’t a tree in sight.”

But the Colonel seemed dazed.  He thought he’d stop anyhow—­“right where he was.”

“Oh, no,” says the Boy, a little frightened; “we’ll camp the minute we come to wood.”  But the Colonel stood as if rooted.  The Boy took his arm and led him on a few paces to the sled.  “You needn’t push hard, you know.  Just keep your hand there so, without looking, you’ll know where I’m going.”  This was very subtle of the Boy.  For he knew the Colonel was blind as a bat and as sensitive as a woman.  “We’ll get through all right yet,” he called back, as he stooped to take up the sledrope.  “I bet on Kentucky.”