nt to all the trivial impertinence of man's existence! Marjorie
felt a passionate desire to pray.

The bleak, slow dawn found Marjorie intently busy. She had made up the
fire, boiled water and washed and dressed Trafford's wounds, and made
another soup of lynx. But Trafford had weakened in the night; the soup
nauseated him; he refused it and tried to smoke and was sick, and then
sat back rather despairfully after a second attempt to persuade her to
leave him there to die. This failure of his spirit distressed her and a
little astonished her, but it only made her more resolute to go through
with her work. She had awakened cold, stiff and weary, but her fatigue
vanished with movement; she toiled for an hour replenishing her pile of
fuel, made up the fire, put his gun ready to his hand, kissed him,
abused him lovingly for the trouble he gave her until his poor torn face
lit in response, and then parting on a note of cheerful confidence, set
out to return to the hut. She found the way not altogether easy to make
out; wind and snow had left scarcely a trace of their tracks, and her
mind was full of the stores she must bring and the possibility of moving
Trafford nearer to the hut. She was startled to see by the fresh, deep
spoor along the ridge how near the wolf had dared approach them in the
darkness.

Ever and again Marjorie had to halt and look back to get her direction
right. As it was, she came through the willow scrub nearly half a mile
above the hut, and had to follow the steep bank of the frozen river.
Once she nearly slipped upon an icy slope of rock.

One possibility she did not dare to think of during that time--a
blizzard now would cut her off absolutely from any return to Trafford.
Short of that, she believed she could get through.

Her quick mind was full of all she had to do. At first she had thought
chiefly of Trafford's immediate necessities, of food and some sort of
shelter. She had got a list of things in her head--meat extract,
bandages, [v]corrosive sublimate by way of antiseptic, brandy, a tin of
beef, some bread, and so forth; she went over it several times to be
sure of it, and then for a time she puzzled about a tent. She thought
she could manage a bale of blankets on her back, and that she could rig
a sleeping tent for herself and Trafford out of them and some bent
sticks. The big tent would be too much to strike and shift. And then her
mind went on to a bolder enterprise, which was to get him ho