s side. She had a delicate beauty and a dainty
mind, and he had sometimes fancied they might be drawn closer when he
had made his mark, which in those days appeared a very probable thing.
He wondered vaguely what she was doing then, or if she ever thought of
him. After all, as she had not answered the one letter which he wrote,
it scarcely seemed likely that she remembered him. Those who fail, he
reflected, are soon forgotten.

Then, as he was falling forward into the fire, he roused himself, and
smiled wryly. He was once more an outcast, shivering, half-asleep in
the wilderness, worn out, ragged, and aching, with a foot that was now
distinctly painful. It is, however, fortunate for such men as he, and
others among the heavily burdened, that the exhaustion of the body has
its deadening effect upon the mind. Rolling the blankets round him, he
lay down on the cedar branches and went to sleep.

He did not hear the timber wolves howling in the blackness of the
night, though several that got wind of him flitted across the ravine
after the fire burned low, and, when at length he awakened, it was
with the fall of a wet flake upon his face, and he saw the dim dawn
breaking through a haze of sliding snow. It seemed a little warmer,
and, as a matter of fact, it was so, for the cold snaps seldom last
very long near the coast; but the raw damp struck through him as he
raked the embers of the fire together. Again he felt singularly
reluctant to start when he had finished breakfast, and he found that
he could hardly place one foot upon the ground; but haste was
imperative now, so he set off limping, with the pack-straps galling
his shoulders cruelly. He also felt a little dizzy, but he pushed on
all that day beside the river through a haze of snow without coming
upon the tree. The dusk was creeping up across the forest when at
length the river emerged from the canyon, and he ventured out upon the
ice in a slacker pool. The ice heaved and crackled under him with the
pulsations of the stream, but he got across, and roused himself with
difficulty for the effort to make another fire. He was an hour
gathering fuel, and then, after a sparing supper, he lay down in his
wet clothing.

The snow that eddied about him whitened his spongy blankets, but he
got a little sleep, and, awakening, found the fire out. He tried to
light it and failed. His fingers seemed useless. He was cramped and
chilled all through, and there was in one hip-joint th