yesterday: it is three days and more since we parted. The book has
brought us luck, and the best. We have found our man; and they'll be here
to-night with him. I came on ahead to see how you fared."

In that frost-bitten world Jeff Hyde uncovered his head for a moment.
"Gaspe Toujours is a papist," he said, "but he read me some of that book
the day you left, and one thing we went to sleep on: it was that about
'Lightenin' the darkness, and defendin' us from all the perils and
dangers of this night.'" Here Gaspe Toujours made the sign of the cross.
Jeff Hyde continued half apologetically for his comrade: "That comes
natural to Gaspe Toujours--I guess it always does to papists. But I never
had any trainin' that way, and I had to turn the thing over and over, and
I fell asleep on it. And when I wake up three days after, here's my eyes
as fresh as daisies, and you back, sir, and the thing done that we come
to do."

He put the Book into Hume's hands and at that moment Gaspe Toujours said:
"See!" Far off, against the eastern horizon, appeared a group of moving
figures.

That night the broken segments of the White Guard were reunited, and
Clive Lepage slept by the side of Jaspar Hume.




VI

Napoleon might have marched back from Moscow with undecimated legions
safely enough, if the heart of those legions had not been crushed. The