Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/298

284 the world was to look for God always to select an angel to send on an errand. Of course Latham couldn't have known about the men coming from the Kadiack; but do you know if he hadn't gone just when he did, and drawn us after him, those men wouldn't have found us. They were turning inshore and going back another way, and they would have missed us by five miles but for him."

Margaret gazed at him, dazed. She heard what he told her and made out the words; but after the fact of their safety only one other realisation seemed to seize her.

"He's dead, you said," she repeated.

"Yes, Margaret; he's dead."

She stared past Eric over the snow to the men and the dog teams and sledges from the Kadiack. "But we will be saved, all the rest of us? All the rest—that must mean you and I, too, Eric—will be saved?"

"All the rest of us are saved, Margaret."

Her eyes closed and for a minute she was unsteady. Her hand groped and caught support from Eric. As she swayed, Koehler had started to her, but now he turned away. She