“You’re not likely to meet him again.  We’ve come to take you back to prison.”

Morse brought the train up and the hungry man was fed.  They treated his eyes with the simple remedies the North knows and bound them with a handkerchief to keep out the fierce light reflected from the snow.

Afterward, they attached him by a line to the driver.  He stumbled along behind.  Sometimes he caught his foot or slipped and plunged down into the snow.  Nobody had ever called him a patient man.  Whenever any mishap occurred, he polluted the air with his vile speech.

They made slow progress, for the pace had to be regulated to suit the prisoner.

Day succeeded day, each with its routine much the same as the one before.  They made breakfast, broke camp, packed, and mushed.  The swish of the runners sounded from morning till night fell.  Food began to run scarce.  Once they left the blind man at the camp while they hunted wood buffalo.  It was a long, hard business.  They came back empty-handed after a two-day chase, but less than a mile from camp they sighted a half-grown polar bear and dropped it before the animal had a chance to move.

One happy hour they got through the Land of Little Sticks and struck the forests again.

They had a blazing fire again for the first time in six weeks.  Brush and sticks and logs went into it till it roared furiously.

Morse turned from replenishing it to notice that West had removed the bandage from his eyes.

“Better keep it on,” the young man advised.

“I was changin’ it.  Too tight.  Gives me a headache,” the convict answered sulkily.

“Can you see anything at all yet?”

“Not a thing.  Looks to me like I never would.”

Tom turned his head for him, so that he faced the blaze squarely.  “No light at all?”

“Nope.  Don’t reckon I ever will see.”

“Maybe you will.  I’ve known’ cases of snow-blindness where they couldn’t see for a month an’ came out all right.”

“Hurts like blazes,” growled the big fellow.

“I know.  But not as bad as it did, does it?  That salve has helped some.”

The two young fellows took care of the man as though he had been a brother.  They bathed his eyes, fed him, guided him, encouraged him.  He was a bad lot—­the worst that either of them had known.  But he was in trouble and filled with self-pity.  Never ill before, a giant of strength and energy, his condition now apparently filled him with despair.

He would sit hunched down before the fire, head bowed in his hands, a mountain of dole and woe.  Sometimes he talked, and he blamed every one but himself for his condition.  He never had had a square deal.  Every one was against him.  It was a rotten world.  Then he would fall to cursing God and man.