It had but suffered for a moment the
agony of delirium.
Gaspe Toujours and Jeff Hyde had lain down in the tent the night of the
great wind, and had gone to sleep at once. The staff had been blown down,
the tent had fallen over them, the drift had covered them, and for three
days they had slept beneath the snow, never waking.
Jeff Hyde's sight was come again to him. "You've come back for the book,"
he said. "You couldn't go on without it. You ought to have taken it
yesterday."
He drew it from his pocket. He was dazed.
"No, Jeff, I've not come back for that, and I did not leave you
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.
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