nd stared into the sunshine.

"Too late! Too late!" he said. "Here he comes! It's time I killed
him." He spoke gratingly, with the dull anger of years.

On the bright surface of the opposite hillside a sled bearing a
muffled figure appeared silhouetted against the glisten of the crust.
Its team, maddened by the village scent, poured down the incline
toward the river bank and the guide swung onto the runners behind,
while the voice of the people rose to their priest. In a whirl of
soft snow they drove down onto the treachery of the ice. The screams
of the natives frenzied the pack and they rioted out onto the bending
sheet, while the long sledge, borne by its momentum, shot forward
till the splitting cry of the ice sounded over the lamentations. It
slackened, sagged and disappeared in a surge of congealing waters.
The wheel dogs were dragged into the opening and their mates ahead
jerked backward onto them. In a fighting tangle, all settled into
the swirl.

Orloff leaped from the sinking sled, but hindered by his fur
swaddling, crashed through and lunged heavily in his struggles to
mount the edge of the film. As he floundered onto the caving surface
it let him back and the waters covered him time and again. He
pitched oddly about, and for the first time they saw his eyes were
bound tightly with bandages, which he strove to loosen.

"My God! He's snow-blind!" cried George, and in a moment he appeared
among the frantic mob fringing the shore.

The guide broke his way toward a hummock of old ice forming an islet
near by, and the priest half swam, half scrambled behind, till they
crawled out upon this solid footing. Here the wintry wind searched
them and their dripping clothes stiffened quickly. Orloff dragged
the strips from his face, and as the sun glitter pierced his eyes he
writhed as though seared by the naked touch of hot steel.

He shouted affrightedly in his blindness, but the mocking voice of
Big George answered him and he cowered at the malevolence in the
words.

"Here I am, Orloff. It's help ye want, is it? I'll shoot the man
that tries to reach ye. Ha, ha! You're freezin' eh? Georgie will
talk to keep ye awake. A dirty trick of the river to cheat me so.
I've fattened for years on the hope of stampin' your life out and now
it's robbed me. But I'll stick till ye're safe in Hell."

The man cried piteously, turning his bleared eyes toward the sound.

"Shoot, why don't you, and end it? C