Armine was drowsily rubbing the ankle, mechanically murmuring something to himself. Jock shook him, saying-
"Take care, don't doze off. What are you mumbling about leisure?"
"O tarry thou the Lord's leisure. Be strong and- Was I saying it aloud?" he broke off with a start.
"Yes; go on."
Armine finished the verse, and Jock commented-
"Comfort thine heart. Does the little chap mean it in a fix like this?"
"Jock," said Armine, now fully awake, "I do want to say something."
"Cut on."
"If you get out of this and I don't-"
"Stop that! We've got heat enough to last till morning."
"Will they find us then? These fogs last for days and turn to snow."
"Don't croak, I say. I can't face mother without you."
"She'll be glad enough to get you. Please listen, Jock, while I'm awake. I want you to give her and all of them my love, and say I'm sorry for all the times I've vexed them."
"As if you had ever-"
"And please Jock, if I was nasty and conceited about the champagne-"
"Shut up, I can't stand this," cried Jock, chiefly from force of habit, for it was a tacit agreement among the elder brothers that Armine must not be suffered to "be cocky and humbug," by which they meant no implication on his sincerity, but that they did not choose to hear remonstrances or appeals to higher motives, and this had made him very reticent with all except his sister Barbara and Miss Ogilvie, but he now persisted.
"Indeed I want you to forgive me, Jock. You don't know how often I've thought all sorts of horridness about you."
Jock laughed, "Not more than I deserved, I'll be bound. How can you be so absurd! If anyone wants forgiveness, it is I. I say, Armie, this is all nonsense. You don't really think you are done for, or you would not take it so coolly."
"Of course I know Who can bring us through if He will," said Armine. "There's the Rock. I've been asking Him all this time-every moment- --only I get so sleepy."
"If He will; but if He won't?"
"Then there's Paradise. And Himself and father," said Armine, still in a dreamy tone.
"Oh, yes; that's for you! But how about a mad fellow like me? It's so sneaking just to take to one's prayers because one's in a bad case."
"Oh, Jock! He is always ready to hear! More ready than we to pray!"
"Now don't begin to improve the occasion," broke out Jock. "By all the stories that ever were written, I'm the one to come to a bad end, not you."
"Don't," said Armine, with an accent of pain that made Jock cry, hugging him tighter. "There, never mind, Armie; I'll let you say all you like. I don't know what made me stop you, except that I'm a beast, and always have been one. I'd give anything not to have gone on playing the fool all my life, so as to be able to mind this as little as you do."
"I don't seem awake enough to mind anything much," said the little boy, "or I should trouble more about Mother and Babie; but somehow I can't."
"Oh!" wailed Jock, "you must! You must get out of it, Armie. Come closer. Shove in between me and the rock. Here, Chico, lie down on the top of us! Mother must have you back any way, Armie."
The little fellow was half-dozing, but words of prayer and faith kept dropping from his tongue. Pain, and a stronger vitality alike, kept Jock free from the torpor, and he used his utmost efforts to rouse his brother; but every now and then a horrible conviction of the hopelessness of their condition came over him.
"Oh!" he groaned out, "how is it to be if this is the end of it? What is to become of a fellow that has been like me?"
Armine only spoke one word; the Name that is above every name.
"Yes, you always cared! But I never cared for anything but fun! Never went to Communion at Easter. It is too late."
"Oh, no, no!" cried Armine, rousing up, "not too late! Never! You are His! You belong to Him! He cares for you!"
"If He does, it makes it all the worse. I never heeded; I thought it all a bore. I never let myself think what it all meant. I've thrown it all away."
"Oh! I wish I wasn't so stupid," cried Armine, with a violent effort against his exhaustion. "Mother loves us, however horrid we are! He is like that; only let us tell Him all the bad we've done, and ask Him to blot it out. I've been trying-trying-only I'm so dull; and let us give ourselves more and more out and out to Him, whether it is here or there."
"That I must," said Jock; "it would be shabby and sneaking not."
"Oh, Jock," cried Armine, joyfully, "then it will all be right any way;" and he raised his face and kissed his brother. "You promise, Jock. Please promise."
"Promise what? That if He will save us out of this, I'll take a new line, and be as good as I know how, and-"
Armine took the word, whether consciously or not: "And manfully to fight under His banner, and continue Christ's faithful soldiers and servants unto our lives' end. Amen!"
"Amen," Jock said, after him.
After that, Jock found that the child was repeating the Creed, and said it after him, the meanings thrilling through him as they had never done before. Next followed lines of "Rock of Ages," and for some time longer there was a drowsy murmur of sacred words, but there was no eliciting a direct reply any more; and with dull constern- ation, Jock knew that the fatal torpor could no longer be broken, and was almost irritated that all the words he caught were such happy, peaceful ones. The very last were, "Inside angels' wings, all white down."
The child seemed almost comfortable-certainly not suffering like himself, bruised and strained, with sharp twinges rending his damaged foot; his limbs cramped, and sensible of the acute misery of the cold, and the full horror of their position; but as long as he could shake even an unconscious murmur from his brother, it seemed like happiness compared with the utter desolation after the last whisper had died away, and he was left intolerably alone under the solid impenetrable shroud that enveloped him, and the senseless form he held on his breast. And if he tried to follow on by that clue which Armine had left him, whirlwinds of dismay seemed to sweep away all hope and trust, while he thought of wilfulness, recklessness, defiance, irreverence, and all the yet darker shades of a self- indulgent and audacious school-boy life!
It was a little lighter, as if dawn might be coming, but the cold was bitterer, and benumbing more than paining him. His clothes were stiff, his eyelashes white with frost, he did not feel equal to looking at his watch, he _would_ not see Armine's face, he found the fog depositing itself in snow, but he heeded it no longer. Fear and hope had alike faded out of his mind, his ankle seemed to belong to some one else far away, he had left off wishing to see his mother, he wanted nothing but to be let alone!
He did not hear when Chico, finding no comfort, no sign of life in his masters, stood upon them as they lay clasped together in the drift of fine small snow, and in the climax of misery he lifted up the long and wretched wailing howlings of utter dog-wretchedness.
CHAPTER XX. A RACE.
Speed, Melise, speed! such cause of haste Thine active sinews never braced, Bend 'gainst the steepy hill thy breast, Burst down like torrent from its crest. Scott.
"Hark!"
The guides and the one other traveller, a Mr. Graham, who had been at the inn, were gathered at the border of the Daubensee, entreating, almost ready to use force to get the poor mother home before the snow should efface the tracks, and render the return to Schwarenbach dangerous.
Ever since the alarm had been given there had been a going about with lights, a shouting and seeking, all along the road where she had parted with her sons. It was impossible in the fog to leave the beaten track, and the traveller told her that rewards would be but temptations to suicide.