ice almost painful. Already, too, its effects were
becoming visible.

Just where the warm rays played on the edge of a gap whose lower
portions were of an exquisite turquoise blue, tiny crystal-like drops
were forming, and as Abel Wray gazed at them with straining eyes he saw
two run together into one, which kept gradually increasing in size till
it grew too heavy for its adhesion to last, and it fell out of sight.

Only a drop of water, but it was the end of May; the snows would be
melting, and before long millions of such drops would have formed and
run together to make trickling rivulets coursing along the snow; these
would soon grow into rushing torrents, and the snow would fall away, and
he would be free.

"What madness!" he groaned. "It will thaw rapidly till the sun is off,
and then freeze once more, and perhaps another avalanche will come.
Yes, I shall be thawed out some day, and some one may come along in the
future and find my bones."

He shuddered, for it was getting black within once more, and a delirious
feeling of horror began to master him, bringing with it thoughts of what
might come.

Bears would be torpid in their snow-covered lairs; but wolves!

He felt as if he could shriek aloud, and he had to set his teeth hard as
his eyes rolled round and up and down the gorge in search of some
wandering pack that would scent him out at once, and in imagination he
went through the brain-paralysing horror of seeing them approach, with
their red, hungry, glaring eyes, their foam-slavered lips and glistening
teeth.

There they were, five, seven, nine of them, gliding over the snow a
hundred yards away, their shadows cast by the sun upon the dazzling
white surface, and he uttered a hoarse cry and his head sank sideways as
he closed his eyes in the reaction.

No wolves, only the few magnified shapes of a covey of snow grouse, the
ryper of the Scandinavian land, which, after running for a while, rose
and passed over him with whirring wings, seeking the lower part of the
valley, where the snow was swept away.

Abel drew a long, deep breath, and then set his teeth once more as he
upbraided himself for his cowardice.

For was he not on the highway--the main track to the golden land; and
was it not a certainty that before long other adventurers would pass
that way?

What was that?

The prisoner listened, with every nerve on the strain, and it was
repeated.

So great was the tension, that as soon as the s