And through it
all it was DeBar's voice that rose in encouragement to the dog limping
behind him and to the man limping behind the dog--now in song, now in
the wild shouting of the sledge-driver, his face thin and gaunt in its
starved whiteness, but his eyes alive with a strange fire. And it was
DeBar who lifted his mittened hands to the leaden chaos of sky when they
came to the frozen streak that was the Red Porcupine, and said, in a
voice through which there ran a strange thrill of something deep and
mighty, "God in Heaven be praised, this is the end!"
He started into a trot now, and the dog trotted behind him, and behind
the dog trotted Philip, wondering, as he had wondered a dozen times
before that night, if DeBar were going mad. Five hundred yards down the
stream DeBar stopped in his tracks, stared for a moment into the
breaking gloom of the shore, and turned to Philip. He spoke in a voice
low and trembling, as if overcome for the moment by some strong emotion.
"See--see there!" he whispered. "I've hit it, Philip Steele, and what
does it mean? I've come over seventy miles of barren, through night an'
storm, an' I've hit Pierre Thoreau's cabin as fair as a shot! Oh, man,
man, I couldn't do it once in ten thousand times!" He gripped Philip's
arm, and his voice rose in excited triumph. "I tell 'ee, it means
that--that God--'r something--must be with me!"
"With us," said Philip, staring hard.
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