he was quitting smote sadly on Yan's heart. They all set out for
the settlement, but within an hour Yan only wanted an excuse to stay.
And when at length they ran onto the fresh track of the Sandhill Stag
himself, the lad was all ablaze once more.

"I cannot go back--something tells me that I must stay--I must see him
face to face again."

The rest had had enough of the bitter frost, so Yan took from the
sleigh a small pot, a blanket, and some food, and left them, to follow
alone the great sharp imprint in the snow.

"Good-by--good luck!"

[Illustration]

He watched the sleigh out of sight, in the low hills, and then felt as
he never had before. Though he had been so many months alone in the
wilds, he had never known loneliness, but as soon as his friends were
gone he was overwhelmed by a sense of the utter heart-sickening
dreariness of the endless, snowy waste. Where were the charms that he
had never failed to find until now? He wanted to recall the sleigh,
but pride kept him silent.

[Illustration]

In a little while it was too late, and soon he was once more in the
power of that fascinating, endless chain of tracks,--a chain begun
years ago, when in a June the track of a mother Blacktail was suddenly
joined by two little ones' tracks. Since then the three had gone on
winding over the land the trail-chains they were forging,--knotted and
kinked, and twisted with every move and thought of the makers,
imprinted with every hap of their lives, but interrupted never wholly.
At times the tracks were joined by that of some fierce foe and the
kind of mark was changed, but the chains went on for months and years,
now fast, now slow, but endless, until some foe more strong joined on
and there one trail was ended. But this great Stag was forging still
that mystic chain. A million roods of hills had he overlaid with its
links, had scribbled over in this oldest script with the story of his
life. If only our eyes were bright enough to follow up that twenty
thousand miles of trail, what light unguessed we might obtain where
the wisest now are groping!

[Illustration]

But skin deep, man is brute. Just a little while ago we were mere
hunting brutes--our bellies were our only thought, that telltale line
of dots was the road to food. No man can follow it far without
feeling a wild beast prickling in his hair and down his spine. Away
Yan went, a hunter-brute once more, all other feelings swamped.

[Illustration]

Late th