oky that
it no longer received the firelight. The hole in the door was like
a flue: the smoke--that deadly green-wood smoke known of old to the
woodsman--streamed through in great clouds. He had shut his eyes at
first; now he found it impossible to keep them open. The pungent
smoke crept into his lungs and throat, burning like fire. He knew
that it could no longer be disregarded.

It had been part of his wilderness training to respond like lightning in
a crisis. Many times on the forest trails life itself had depended upon
an instantaneous decision, then immediate effort to carry the decision
out. The fawn that does not leap like a serpent's head at the first
crack of a twig as the wolf steals toward him in the thicket never lives
to grow antlers. The power to act, to summon and focus the full might
of the muscles in the wink of an eye, then to hurl them into a breach
had been Bill's salvation many times. But to-night the power seemed
gone. For long seconds his muscles hung inert. He didn't know what to
do.

The capacity for mighty and instantaneous effort seemed gone from his
body. His mind was slow too,--blunted. He could make no decisions.
He only seemed bewildered and impotent.

The truth was that Bill had been near the point of utter exhaustion from
his day's toil in the snow and his labor of building the fire. The
vital nervous fluids no longer sprang forth to his muscles at the
command of his brain: they came tardily, if at all. The fountain of his
nervous energy had simply run down as the battery runs down in a motor,
and it could only be recharged by a rest. But there was a deeper reason
behind this strange apathy. The last blow--the sight of the
photograph of his father's murderer and its new connection with his
life--had for the time being at least crushed the fighting spirit within
the man. The fight for life no longer seemed worth while. In his
bitterness he had lost the power to care.

The smoke deepened in the cabin. It seemed to be affecting his power to
stand erect. He tried to think of some way to save himself; his mind
was slow and dull.

He knew that he couldn't get out of the cabin. There was only a little
hole in the door; to crawl through it, inch by inch as he had entered,
would subject him to the full fury of the flames. Oh, they would sear
and destroy him quickly if he tried to creep through them! All night
they had been mocking him with their cheerful crackle; they