“Tom never was in a hurry.  It’s rough on you,” he said.  Still, Seaforth, who had once held his own with men and women in quick retort and graceful badinage in England, did not answer, but only pressed the hard fingers that now lay somewhat limply in his palm and wondered vaguely whether the ordeal would never be over.  It was only then he realized to the full all that Alton had been to him since the day he limped, ragged and very hungry, into a little mining camp.  His friends in the old country had turned their backs on him, and Seaforth, who had been hopeless and desperate then, knew that he owed a good deal more than material prosperity to Alton of Somasco.

“Tom,” he said hoarsely, “I think we’re ready.”

Okanagan said nothing, but stooped again, and Seaforth tightening his grasp of the contracting fingers, heard the sound of uneven breathing through the thud of snow upon the tent.  He was by this time a little more master of himself, and looked steadily down on the white face with the grimly-set lips.  His own was distorted into what was not a sympathetic smile, but a grotesque grin, and there was every now and then a reflection of it in the one awry with pain which looked up at him.  Then Alton drew in his breath with a little quivering sigh, and there was a rattle as Okanagan dropped the steel.

“I want that bandage—­quick.  We are through now,” he said.

Seaforth had afterwards a hazy recollection of helping him to twist the strip of fabric about the firm white flesh, and that his hands made red smears on Alton’s deerskin jacket when he stooped and lifted him a little.  There was no bronze in his comrade’s face, but in place of it a curious yellow tinge, through which the greyness showed in patches, and with fingers that were strangely clumsy he held a flask to Alton’s lips.

The latter choked, and then his eyes opened wide again.  “Pass it round.  I’m figuring you’re all wanting some,” he said.

Seaforth to humour him touched the flask with his lips, and handed it to Tom, who did the same, and then screwing the top on it passed it back to Seaforth no emptier than when it reached him.  Alton, however, raised his head a trifle further, and looked at both of them.

“You’ll have to do it better.  Let me see the thing,” he said.

Okanagan glanced at him severely.  “I guess you’ll lie right where you are and keep very still, or I’ll make a hole through the other leg,” he said.

Alton appeared to chuckle, but his arm slipped from under him, and he dropped back heavily amidst the blankets with eyes closed while Seaforth bent over him.

“That’s all right,” said Okanagan.  “You needn’t worry.  I was kind of hoping he would do it because I was anxious about the bleeding.  Now we’ll get everything fixed up before he comes round again.”

Seaforth did what he was bidden, and nothing more, for he had been reared in England, and not amidst the firs and snows of Northern Canada where misadventures are many and doctors very few, but he envied the big bushman his skill that day, and Okanagan may have guessed it, for he once smiled a little as he said: