darkness. What made him rouse one with his awful laughter? These
spells of walking insensibility were pleasanter far. At last the big
man fell. To Willard's mechanical endeavours to help he spoke
sleepily, but with the sanity of a man under great stress.

"Dat no good. I'm goin' freeze right 'ere--freeze stiff as 'ell. Au
revoir."

"Get up!" Willard kicked him weakly, then sat upon the prostrate man as
his own faculties went wandering.

Eventually he roused, and digging into the snow buried the other, first
covering his face with the ample parka hood. Then he struck down the
valley. In one lucid spell he found he had followed a sled trail,
which was blown clear and distinct by the wind that had now almost died
away.

Occasionally his mind grew clear, and his pains beat in upon him till
he grew furious at the life in him which refused to end, which forced
him ever through this gauntlet of misery. More often he was conscious
only of a vague and terrible extremity outside of himself that goaded
him forever forward. Anon he strained to recollect his destination.
His features had set in an implacable grimace of physical torture--like
a runner in the fury of a finish--till the frost hardened them so. At
times he fell heavily, face downward, and at length upon the trail,
lying so till that omnipresent coercion that had frozen in his brain
drove him forward.

He heard his own voice maundering through lifeless lips like that of a
stranger: "The man that can eat his soul will win, Pierre."

Sometimes he cried like a child and slaver ran from his open mouth,
freezing at his breast. One of his hands was going dead. He stripped
the left mitten off and drew it laboriously over the right. One he
would save at least, even though he lost the other. He looked at the
bare member dully, and he could not tell that the cold had eased till
the bitterness was nearly out of the air. He laboured with the fitful
spurts of a machine run down.

Ten men and many dogs lay together in the Crooked River Road House
through the storm. At late bedtime of the last night came a scratching
on the door.

"Somebody's left a dog outside," said a teamster, and rose to let him
in. He opened the door only to retreat affrightedly.

"My God!" he said. "My God!" and the miners crowded forward.

A figure tottered over the portal, swaying drunkenly. They shuddered
at the sight of its face as it crossed toward the fire. It did not
wal