ere drawing out and the nights getting shorter. The
untempered sun of the Northland beat down on the cold snow crystals
and reflected a million sparks of light. In that white field the glare
was almost unbearable. Both of them wore smoked glasses, but even with
these their eyes continually smarted. They grew red and swollen. If
time had not been so great an element in their journey, they would
have tried to travel only after sunset. But they could not afford
this. West would keep going as long and as fast as he could.

Each of them dreaded snow-blindness. They knew the sign of it--a
dreadful pain, a smarting of the eyeballs as though hot burning sand
were being flung against them. In camp at night they bathed their
swollen lids and applied a cool and healing salve.

Meanwhile the weeks slipped into months and still they held like
bulldogs to the trail of the man they were after.

The silence of the wide, empty white wastes surrounded them, except
for an occasional word, the whine of a dog, and the slithering crunch
of the sled-runners. From unfriendly frozen deserts they passed,
through eternal stillness, into the snow wilderness that seemed to
stretch forever. When they came to forests, now thinner, smaller, and
less frequent, they welcomed them as they would an old friend.

"He's headin' for Great Bear, looks like," Morse suggested one morning
after an hour in which neither of them had spoken.

"I was wondering when you'd chirp up, Tom," Beresford grinned
cheerfully. "Sometimes I think I'm fed up for life on the hissing of
snowshoe runners. The human voice sure sounds good up here. Yes, Great
Bear Lake. And after that, where?"

"Up the lake, across to the Mackenzie, and down it to the ocean, I'd
say. He's makin' for the whaling waters. Herschel Island maybe. He's
hoping to bump into a whaler and get down on it to 'Frisco."

"Your guess is just as good as any," the Canadian admitted. "He's
cut out a man-sized job for himself. I'll say that for him. It's a
five-to-one bet he never gets through alive, even if we don't nab
him."

"What else can he do? He's got to keep going or be dragged back to be
hanged. I'd travel too if I were in his place."

"So would I. He's certainly hitting her up. Wish he'd break his leg
for a week or two," the constable said airily.

They swung into a dense spruce swamp and jumped up a half-grown bear.
He was so close to them that Tom, who was breaking trail, could see
his little shi