“I—­I—­didn’t—­Christ!  I didn’t shoot you ...  Frank! ...  Answer me!  Say something. ...”  Even yet the dread of that hobgoblin presence lay like ice upon the elder brother; he feared to move lest he encounter it, lest he touch it and it enfold him; but when Frank’s twitching body became still he fell to his knees and went groping forward on all-fours in search of it.  Death was here now.  He had slain his brother and there was no light!

Joe began to sob and to chatter in a maudlin hysteria of fright and apprehension.  He succeeded in finding Frank by the sound of his breathing, and he was pawing at him and wildly calling his name when at his back a match was struck.

The sound, the flare, brought a scream from his throat.  He cringed and cowered; the pallid face he raised was slack-jawed, his gaze was that of a crazy man.

Slowly, very slowly his dementia left him.  His eyes were still distended, to be sure, but into them sanity, recognition, began to creep.  He stared dazedly about him, and at last he managed to speak Doret’s name.

“Wh-what you doing—­here?” he breathed.

“Me?  I come to tak’ you back.”  Joe shook his head weakly.  “You can’t.  We’re across—­safe.”  His eyes dropped to the prostrate body beside which he knelt, and a new thought swiftly flooded his vacant mind.  “Look!  You—­Now I understand.  You did it!  You shot him.  I never—­by god!” The fellow’s insane vehemence, the panting eagerness with which he undertook to absolve himself from the hideous results of his deed, argued that he loved his brother.  He rose slowly to his feet, his countenance flaming, his gaze fixed in an arresting expression of mingled rage and horror upon the woodsman’s face.  “You did it, damn you!  Shot him, in the dark, asleep!  Now you want me ...  Take me back, eh?  You can’t do it.  I’m safe ... safe ... !”

’Poleon uttered a grunt.  He leaned his carbine against the wall behind him, and from his pocket he drew a thin cotton sled-rope.  With this in his hand he advanced upon the slayer.

McCaskey retreated.  Weakly at first he fought off his captor; then, as fear overwhelmed him, he became possessed of a phrenetic energy and struggled with the strength of two men.  He struck, he bit, he clawed, he kicked.  It was like the battle of a man with a beast—­ferocious, merciless—­while it lasted.  They rocked about the cabin, heedless of the wounded man; the stove came crashing down and they trampled the pipe under their feet.

But McCaskey collapsed as suddenly as he had flown to action.  When ’Poleon trussed him up he had neither strength nor spirit either for resistance or for resentment.  He was as spineless as a wet sack.  With anguished eyes he watched his captor lift Frank into a bunk and then proceed to do what remained to be done.  Bleak of face, lifeless of voice, hopeless of expression, he answered the questions put to him and made no feeblest effort at concealment.  He was, in fact, no longer capable of any resistance, mental or physical.