man's flagging energies had been needed, and it had come. He
had lain down as one who had given up all hope, who had lost all that
bound him to life; but that was but the dream of weakness, the
stagnation of his nature, brought on by suffering, loneliness, and
despair.

Face to face now with this danger, confronted by a cowardly ruffian,
Nature made her call, and it was answered. The strong desire for life
returned, and with another hoarse cry he flung himself aside, and thus
avoided the blow aimed at him.

The next moment he had thrown himself upon his assailant. In an instant
his hands were upon his throat. And now a terrible struggle ensued, in
which a strange sense of strength came back to Abel; and he kept his
hold, as, failing to extricate himself, his assailant retaliated by
seizing him in the same way, and kept on raising and beating the
fettered man's head against the floor.

For in their struggle they had writhed and twisted till they were
approaching the fire; and as they strove on in their fight for the
mastery, Abel was conscious of hearing a loud yelp. Then his breath
grew shorter, there was a horrible sensation of the blood rushing to his
eyes, as he gasped for breath--a terrible swimming of the brain--lights
bright as flashes of lightning danced before his eyes, and then with his
senses reeling he was conscious of a tremendous weight, and then all was
black--all was silent as the grave.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Two days late," said Dallas, as he paused for a few moments to rest and
gain his breath, before shooting into collar again, when the trace
tightened, the sledge creaked and ground over the blocks of ice, and
glided over the obstruction which had checked him for the moment, and
the runners of the heavily loaded frame rushed down the slope, nearly
knocking him off his feet. The young man growled savagely, for the blow
was a hard one.

"If you could only keep on like that I'd give you an open course," he
said; "but you will not. Never mind; every foot's a foot gained.
Wonder how old Abel is getting on?"

He shot into the collar once more, the trace tightened, and he went on
for another hundred yards over the ice and snow.

The young man's collar was a band of leather, his trace a rope, but no
horse ever worked harder or perspired more freely than he, who was
self-harnessed to the loaded sledge.

"I don't mind," he had said over and