And this doubtless explains why he found it so hard to tell that group round the fire—­everything.  He told enough, however, for the immediate decision to be arrived at that a relief party must start at the earliest possible moment, and that Simpson, in order to guide it capably, must first have food and, above all, sleep.  Dr. Cathcart observing the lad’s condition more shrewdly than his patient knew, gave him a very slight injection of morphine.  For six hours he slept like the dead.

From the description carefully written out afterwards by this student of divinity, it appears that the account he gave to the astonished group omitted sundry vital and important details.  He declares that, with his uncle’s wholesome, matter-of-fact countenance staring him in the face, he simply had not the courage to mention them.  Thus, all the search party gathered, it would seem, was that Defago had suffered in the night an acute and inexplicable attack of mania, had imagined himself “called” by someone or something, and had plunged into the bush after it without food or rifle, where he must die a horrible and lingering death by cold and starvation unless he could be found and rescued in time.  “In time,” moreover, meant at once.

In the course of the following day, however—­they were off by seven, leaving Punk in charge with instructions to have food and fire always ready—­Simpson found it possible to tell his uncle a good deal more of the story’s true inwardness, without divining that it was drawn out of him as a matter of fact by a very subtle form of cross examination.  By the time they reached the beginning of the trail, where the canoe was laid up against the return journey, he had mentioned how Defago spoke vaguely of “something he called a ‘Wendigo’”; how he cried in his sleep; how he imagined an unusual scent about the camp; and had betrayed other symptoms of mental excitement.  He also admitted the bewildering effect of “that extraordinary odor” upon himself, “pungent and acrid like the odor of lions.”  And by the time they were within an easy hour of Fifty Island Water he had let slip the further fact—­a foolish avowal of his own hysterical condition, as he felt afterwards—­that he had heard the vanished guide call “for help.”  He omitted the singular phrases used, for he simply could not bring himself to repeat the preposterous language.  Also, while describing how the man’s footsteps in the snow had gradually assumed an exact miniature likeness of the animal’s plunging tracks, he left out the fact that they measured a wholly incredible distance.  It seemed a question, nicely balanced between individual pride and honesty, what he should reveal and what suppress.  He mentioned the fiery tinge in the snow, for instance, yet shrank from telling that body and bed had been partly dragged out of the tent....