"It was no more than a man should do; but as to taking him at his word,
why, that's another question." The colonel paused and gustily cleared his
throat. "They were up against it right then and there, and the party split
upon it. Three of them went on,--for help, as they put it,--and Paul
stayed behind with the wounded man."

"Paul stayed--alone?" Mrs. Bogardus uttered with hoarse emphasis. "Was not
that a very strange way to divide? Among them all, I should think they
might have brought the man out with them."

"Their story is that his injuries were such that he could not have borne
the pain of the journey. Rather an unusual case," the colonel added dryly.
"In my experience, a wounded man will stand anything sooner than be left
on the field."

"I cannot understand it," Mrs. Bogardus repeated, in a voice of indignant
pain. "Such a strange division! One man left alone--to nurse, and hunt,
and cook, and keep up fires! Suppose the guide should die!"

"Paul was not _left_, you know," the colonel said emphatically. "He
_stayed_. And I should be thankful in your place, madam, that my son was
the man who made that choice. But setting conduct aside, for we are not
prepared to judge, it is merely a matter of time our getting in there, now
that we know where he is."

"How much time?" Mrs. Bogardus opened her ashen lips to say.

The colonel's face fell. "Mr. Winslow reports heavy snows for the past
week,--soft, clogging snow,--too deep to wade through and too soft to