The solution was easy. It was his mind struggling
to equilibrium after four years of brain-fag. And he felt better. His
brain was clearer. He listened to the watch and found its ticking
natural. He braced himself to another effort and whistled as he
prepared his breakfast.
After that he packed his dunnage and continued south. He wondered if
Conniston ever knew his Manual as he learned it now. At the end of the
sixth day he could repeat it from cover to cover. Every hour he made it
a practice to stop short and salute the trees about him. McDowell would
not catch him there.
"I am Derwent Conniston," he kept telling himself. "John Keith is
dead--dead. I buried him back there under the cabin, the cabin built by
Sergeant Trossy and his patrol in nineteen hundred and eight. My name
is Conniston--Derwent Conniston."
In his years of aloneness he had grown into the habit of talking to
himself--or with himself--to keep up his courage and sanity. "Keith,
old boy, we've got to fight it out," he would say. Now it was,
"Conniston, old chap, we'll win or die." After the third day, he never
spoke of John Keith except as a man who was dead. And over the dead
John Keith he spread Conniston's mantle.
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