nd blinked at Weston with half-closed eyes.

"You can't understand. You have the world before you," he said.

Weston fancied that he could understand in part, at least. His comrade
was an old and frail and friendless man for whom nobody in that
country was, as they say there, likely to have any use, and the fact
that he probably had himself to blame for it did not make things
easier. Weston forgot that he also was a man without an occupation,
and his face grew sympathetic; but in a few minutes Grenfell seemed to
pull himself together.

"Well," he said, "we'll take the back trail."

They followed it for a week, but the distance that they covered
diminished day by day. Grenfell would insist on sitting down for half
an hour or so at regular intervals, and when they faced a steep ascent
Weston had to drag him. The man seemed to have fallen to pieces now
that the purpose that had sustained him had failed, and his comrade,
who carried a double burden and undertook all that was necessary each
time they made camp, grew more and more anxious every day, for, though
they did not eat enough to keep the strength in them, their provisions
were almost exhausted. Nor could he find a deer; and it became a
momentous question whether they could reach the cache before the last
handful of flour was gone. Still, they held on along the back trail,
with the burst boots galling their bleeding feet, worn-out, haggard,
and ragged, until, one day on the slope of the range, they lost the
trail, and when evening was drawing in they held a consultation.

There was a valley; a creek came frothing down not far from them; a
narrow, steep-sided cleft rent through stupendous rocks; and the white
ridge high above it seemed familiar. Weston gazed at the latter
thoughtfully.

"We could get up that way, and there'll be good moonlight to-night,"
he said. "If that snow-ridge lies where I think it does, there's a
ravine running down through the neck of the high spur; and once we
strike the big dip it's a straight trail to the cache. If we started
now we ought to get there to-morrow."

He broke off for a moment, and opened the almost-empty bag.

"In fact we have to."

Grenfell made a sign of acquiescence, and by and by they rose and
forced a passage through the timber into the ravine. Then they went up
and up, through the creek and beside it, crawling over fallen trees,
and dragging themselves across slippery shelves of rock, until, though
still very s