"Yes," said Carl. He shuddered.
In the silence the storm battered fiercely at the wigwam.
Philip wheeled furiously.
"What is it?" he demanded. "In God's name what threatens her, that
even here in these God-forsaken wilds she is not safe?" He towered
grim above the crouching man on the floor of the wigwam. "For months I
have guarded her day and night," he went on fiercely, "from some
damnable mystery and treachery that has almost muddled my life beyond
repair. What is it? Why were you creeping to her wigwam to-night with
a knife in your hand?"
Carl flinched beneath the blazing anger and contempt in his eyes. The
droning in his head grew suddenly to a roar. The nausea flamed again
over his body. For a dizzy interval he confused the noise of the storm
with the drone in his head. Philip seized the lantern and bending,
stared closely into his white face and haunted eyes.
"You're ill!" he said gently.
"Yes," said Carl. "I--I think so." He met Philip's glance of sympathy
with one of wild imploring. It was the man's desperate effort to keep
this one friend from sweeping hostilely out of his life on the wings of
the dark, impious tempest he had roused himself. To his disordered
brain nothing else mattered. Philip had trusted him always--and his
knife had menaced Philip.
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