he right path--one in stoic resignation, the other in
a passion of regret and despair. They were almost exhausted, and only
kept moving through fear of that snow-sleep from which there is no
awakening. Even this fear had now become dulled through cold and
weariness.

When the blizzard first struck them, Dick's obstinacy had changed to a
very lively realisation of danger. "We will turn back now, if you
like," he had said somewhat shamefacedly.

But Peter had given one of his rare, bitter laughs. "All too late," he
had said grimly. "Death behind as well as in front--everywhere.
P'raps so we go on we find band of Indians that we followed. P'raps we
do. All too late go back now, too late." And, with those words in
their ears, they had faced the unsheltered prairie and the strength of
the storm.

For the first day hope had been left to them, for they could judge
their direction from the steady, cutting wind. But, after that, the
wind began to shift constantly, and thus their only guide failed them.
A prairie is not as bare of all landmarks as a lawn, but one
buffalo-wallow is much like another, one poplar-bluff is not
distinguishable from the next, and most sloughs have a family likeness
to each other, especially when one's circle of vision is limited to a
couple of yards' radius, and everything beyond is blotted out with
pitiless, hurrying, scurrying clouds of white flakes. Dick was utterly
lost. "Where are we? Where are we?" he kept saying. "Is the whole
world turning to snow?" And sometimes, angrily, "I know you are going
the wrong way, Peter. I know you are." Whereupon he would stumble off
by himself, and the Indian would follow and drag him back again.

"No right, no wrong, no anything," Peter exclaimed angrily in answer;
"but you must not go round, round, round in circles. That what you
doing, an' if you do so, you die pretty quick. You come on with me."
And actually they had kept a straighter course than they knew, or than
they would have dared to hope, thanks to the Indian's sense of
direction.

The first night they passed in the shelter of a large bluff of aspens,
and were not very much the worse for it. It was then that they somehow
lost one of their ponies through inexcusable carelessness in securing
it, and it was after that also that they began to lose hope.

Their food as well as their strength was failing them, and on this
third day they were in a very bad case. Dick had, of course,