Elizabeth caught up the child and placed him beside her on the rug.  He put out his soft, moist fingers, touching her face curiously, with gathering doubt.  Then, satisfied this was not his mother, as in the uncertain light he must have supposed, he drew back with a whimper and clung to Elizabeth.

At the same moment Mrs. Weatherbee’s smile changed to disappointment.  “His eyes are brown, Elizabeth,” she said, “and my baby’s were blue, like mine.”  And she turned her face, weeping; not hysterically, like a woman physically unstrung, but with the slow, deep sobs of a woman who has wakened from a dream of one whom she has greatly loved—­and buried.

CHAPTER XXVIII

SURRENDER

Tisdale had not seen Beatriz Weatherbee since she had been brought semi-conscious from the foot of the mountain, but he learned from the hotel physician the following morning that she was able to travel on the special train which was coming from Seattle to transport the Morganstein party home.  The first inquiry, after news of the disaster reached the outside world, was from Joey’s grandfather, a lumberman on Puget Sound.  Put in communication with Tisdale, he telephoned he would arrive at the Springs on the special.  So, leaving the child in charge of the housekeeper, Hollis returned to the west portal, to join the little force of rescuers.  It was then no longer a question of life-saving, but of identification.  The Swiss chalet, which had ceased to be the mecca of pleasure-seekers, had become a morgue.

But Lucky Banks, who went with him, had received a message from Mrs. Weatherbee, and in the interval that Tisdale was busy with long-distance and disposing of Joey, the prospector went up to her room.  She was pale and very weak, but she smiled as he approached her couch and held out her hand.  “No, the right one,” she said, and added, taking it with a gentle pressure, “I know, now, what it is—­to be cold.”

The little man nodded.  His face worked, and he hurried to conceal the maimed hand in his pocket.  “But the doctor says you’ll pull through good as new,” he commented.  “I am proud to know that; my, yes.”

“And I am proud of you, Mr. Banks.  It seems incredible, but Miss Morganstein told me you rescued her brother, too.  I’ve tried and tried to remember, but I am not able.  You must have carried me, at least, all of the way.”

Banks glanced at Elizabeth, who was seated beyond the couch.  She had laid a warning finger to her lips and shook her head.  “That was dead easy coming downgrade,” he answered.  “And that little blow up there on the mountain top wasn’t anything to speak of, alongside a regular Alaska blizzard.  If I’d had to weight my pockets with rocks, that would have been something doing.  I might have felt then that I was squaring myself with Dave Weatherbee.”

“I understand,” she said slowly, “but,” and she smiled again, “I am grateful, Mr. Banks, just the same.  Perhaps, since you loved David so much, you will regard it as a kind of compensation that I am going on with the project.”