once Clark himself tottered where he beat the ice at the apex of the line.  Some swooned and would have drowned had they not been dragged across the canoe and chafed back to consciousness.  By inches the water shallowed.  Clark reached the high ground, and then Bill Cowan, with a man on each shoulder.  Then others endured to the shallows to fall heavily in the crumbled ice and be dragged out before they died.  But at length, by God’s grace, the whole regiment was on the land.  Fires would not revive some, but Clark himself seized a fainting man by the arms and walked him up and down in the sunlight until his blood ran again.

It was a glorious day, a day when the sap ran in the maples, and the sun soared upwards in a sky of the palest blue.  All this we saw through the tracery of the leafless branches,—­a mirthless, shivering crowd, crept through a hell of weather into the Hair Buyer’s very lair.  Had he neither heard nor seen?

Down the steel-blue lane of water between the ice came a canoe.  Our stunted senses perceived it, unresponsive.  A man cried out (it was Tom McChesney); now some of them had leaped into the pirogue, now they were returning.  In the towed canoe two fat and stolid squaws and a pappoose were huddled, and beside them—­God be praised!—­food.  A piece of buffalo on its way to town, and in the end compartment of the boat tallow and bear’s grease lay revealed by two blows of the tomahawk.  The kettles—­long disused—­were fetched, and broth made and fed in sips to the weakest, while the strongest looked on and smiled in an agony of self-restraint.  It was a fearful thing to see men whose legs had refused service struggle to their feet when they had drunk the steaming, greasy mixture.  And the Colonel, standing by the river’s edge, turned his face away—­down-stream.  And then, as often, I saw the other side of the man.  Suddenly he looked at me, standing wistful at his side.

“They have cursed me,” said he, by way of a question, “they have cursed me every day.”  And seeing me silent, he insisted, “Tell me, is it not so, Davy?”

“It is so,” I said, wondering that he should pry, “but it was while they suffered.  And—­and some refrained.”

“And you?” he asked queerly.

“I—­I could not, sir.  For I asked leave to come.”

“If they have condemned me to a thousand hells,” said he, dispassionately, “I should not blame them.”  Again he looked at me.  “Do you understand what you have done?” he asked.

“No, sir,” I said uneasily.

“And yet there are some human qualities in you, Davy.  You have been worth more to me than another regiment.”

I stared.

“When you grow older, if you ever do, tell your children that once upon a time you put a hundred men to shame.  It is no small thing.”

Seeing him relapse into silence, I did not speak.  For the space of half an hour he stared down the river, and I knew that he was looking vainly for the Willing.