her muscles were tired, her
footsteps dragged, and the rackets clung to her feet like inexorable
weights which sought to drag her down, down into the soft whiteness of
the snow.

Darkness gathered, and the back-trail dimmed. Twice she fell and
regained her feet with an effort. Suddenly rounding a sharp bend, she
crashed heavily among the dead branches of a fallen tree. When at
length she regained her feet, the last vestige of daylight had
vanished. Her own snowshoe tracks were indiscernible upon the white
snow. She was off the trail!

Something warm and wet trickled along her cheek. She jerked off her
mittens and with fingers tingling in the cold, keen air, picked bits of
bark from the edges of the ragged wound where the end of a broken
branch had snagged the soft flesh of her face. The wound stung, and
she held a handful of snow against it until the pain dulled under the
numbing chill.

Stories of the night-prowling wolf-pack, and the sinister, man-eating
_loup cervier_, crowded her brain. She must build a fire. She felt
through her pocket for the glass bottle of matches, only to find that
her fingers were too numb to remove the cork. She replaced the vial
and, drawing on her mittens, beat her hands together until the blood
tingled to her finger-tips. How she wished now that she had heeded the
advice of LeFroy, who had cautioned against venturing into the woods
without a light camp ax slung to her belt.

Laboriously she set about gathering bark and light twigs which she
piled in the shelter of a cut-bank, and when at last a feeble flame
flickered weakly among the thin twigs she added larger branches which
she broke and twisted from the limbs of the dead trees. Her camp-fire
assumed a healthy proportion, and the flare of it upon the snow was
encouraging.

At the end of an hour, Chloe removed her rackets and dropped wearily
onto the snow beside the fire-wood which she had piled conveniently
close to the blaze. Never in her life had she been so utterly weary,
but she realized that for her that night there could be no sleep. And
no sooner had the realization forced itself upon her than she fell
sound asleep with her head upon the pile of fire-wood.

She awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright, staring in bewilderment
at her fire--and beyond the fire where, only a few feet distant, a
hooded shape stood dimly outlined against the snow. Chloe's garments,
dampened by the exertion of the earlier hours,