hey dropped into casual talk
which lasted until they went to sleep.

When dawn came it was snowing hard, and for a week they made poor
progress with a bitter gale driving the flakes in their faces, while
rations were cut down as the distance covered daily steadily lessened.
Harding's leg was getting sore, but he did not mean to speak of this
unless it was necessary. They were, however, approaching the
neighbourhood of the Indian village and Blake began to speculate upon
the probability of their finding its inhabitants at home. He
understood that the Stonies wandered about, and realized with
uneasiness that it would be singularly unfortunate if they were away on
a hunting trip.

At length, after laboriously climbing the rough but gently rising slope
of a long divide all one blustering day, they camped on a high
tableland, and lay awake, too cold to sleep, beside a sulky, greenwood
fire. In the morning it was difficult to get upon their feet, but as
the light grew clearer, the prospect they looked down upon seized their
attention. The hill summits were wrapped in leaden cloud, but a valley
opened up below. It was wider and deeper than any they had met with
since leaving the factory, the bottom looked unusually level, and it
ran roughly south.

They gazed at it in silence for a time; and then Harding said, "I've a
notion that this is the valley where Blake fell sick, and it's going to
straighten out things for us if I'm right."

"That's so," Benson agreed. "We would be sure of striking the Stony
village, and we could afterwards follow the low ground right down to
the river. With the muskegs frozen solid, it ought to make an easy
road."

Blake was conscious of keen satisfaction, but there was still a doubt.

"We'll know more about it after another march," he said.

No snow fell that morning, and as their packs were ominously light they
made good speed across the hill benches and down a ravine where they
scrambled among the boulders of a frozen creek. It was a grey day
without the rise in temperature that often accompanies cloudiness, and
the light was strangely dim. Rocks and pines melted into one another
at a short distance, and leaden haze obscured the lower valley. Blake
was, however, becoming sure it was the one they had travelled up and,
dispensing with the usual noon halt, they pushed on as fast as
possible. All were anxious to set their doubts at rest, for there was
now a prospect of obtaining foo