ear, a curious confusion and perplexity in his brain. It was hard to
remember who he was and where he was going. Just to count his steps,
stoop, grope and find the snowshoe trail, then journey on again.

He tried to increase the number of steps between his gropings--first
six, then seven. Above seven, however, the trail was so hard to find
that time was lost rather than gained. Yes, he thought it was still
daylight. Sometimes he seemed to feel the sunlight on his face. He was
not cold now, and even the pain was gone from his hips and thighs.

He was mistaken in this, however. The pain still sent its fearful
messages to his brain, but in his growing stupor he was no longer aware
of them. Even his hand didn't hurt him now. He wondered if it were
frozen; yet it was still sensitive to the depressions in the drifts. It
could still grope through the snow and find the tracks.

"I can't go on!" his voice suddenly spoke aloud. "I can't go--any
more."

The words seemed to come from an inner man, without volition on his
part. He was a little amazed to hear them. Yet the time had not yet
come to stop and rest. The tracks still led him on.

Always, it seemed to him, he had to grope longer to find the
indentations in the snow. The simple reason was that the motor centers
of his brain had begun to be impaired by cold and exhaustion, and he
could no longer walk in a straight line. He found out, however, that
the trail usually lay to the right rather than to his left. He was
taking a shorter step with his left than with his right--the same
tendency that often makes a tried woodsman walk in a great circle--and
he thus bore constantly to the left. Soon it became necessary to drop
his formula down to six, then to the original five.

On and on, through the long hours. But the fight was almost done.
Exhaustion and hunger, but cold most of all, were swiftly breaking him
down. He advanced with staggering steps.

The indentations were more shallow now. The point where he had begun to
break through the snow crust, because of the softening snow, was passed
long ago: only because he was in a valley sheltered from the wind were
the tracks manifest at all.

The time came at last when he could no longer get upon his feet. And
now, like a Tithonus who could not die, he crawled along the snowshoe
trail on is hands and knees. "I can't go on," he told himself. "I'm
through!" Yet always his muscles made one movement more.