Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/297

Rh Latham, and made him look at her, unable to meet her eyes.

"Then what about Latham, Eric?" Koehler persisted; and he too seemed now to understand.

"He's dead, doctor," Eric said quietly to him.

"Dead?" Koehler repeated.

Margaret, dazed, seemed not to have heard the word or not to have understood it. She stared at Eric, frightened, trembling. He turned to her.

"We have brought him—his body—back on one of the sledges," he said to her; then turned back to Koehler. Simply and quietly he related what he and Geoff and the Eskimos had found. Then he turned again to Margaret.

"He saved us, Margaret," he said to her. "Whatever he tried to do, he saved us. We must remember that whenever we remember anything else about him."

"Yes, yes," she repeated. "Yes."

"I have been thinking of what my father used to say, Margaret—you know he was a missionary. He said the greatest mistake in