hting up with a sickly glow the
diseased world that had swallowed him. He lay in the bottom of his
canoe, covering his face with his caribou coat, and tried to sleep. But
sleep would not come. Before dawn he struck on, watching his compass by
the light of matches. All that day he made no effort to swallow food.
But with the coming of the second night he found the air easier to
breathe. He fought his way on by the light of the moon which was
clearer now. And at last, in a resting spell, he heard far ahead of him
the howl of a wolf.

In his joy he cried out. A western breeze brought him air that he drank
in as a desert-stricken man drinks water. He did not look at his
compass again, but worked steadily in the face of that fresh air. An
hour later he found that he was paddling again a slow current, and when
he tasted the water it was only slightly tainted with sulphur. By
midnight the water was cool and clean. He landed on a shore of sand and
pebbles, stripped to the skin, and gave himself such a scouring as he
had never before experienced. He had worn his old trapping shirt and
trousers, and after his bath he changed to the outfit which he had kept
clean in his pack. Then he built a fire and ate his first meal in two
days.

The next morning he climbed a tall spruce and surveyed the country
about him. Westward there was a broad low country shut in fifteen or
twenty miles away by the foothills. Beyond these foothills rose the
snow-capped peaks of the Rockies. He shaved himself, cut his hair, and
went on. That night he camped only when he could drive his canoe no
farther. The waterway had narrowed to a creek, and he was among the
first green shoulders of the hills when he stopped. With another dawn
he concealed his canoe in a sheltered place and went on with his pack.

For a week he picked his way slowly westward. It was a splendid country
into which he had come, and yet he found no sign of human life. The
foothills changed to mountains, and he believed he was in the Campbell
Range. Also he knew that he had followed the logical trail from the
sulphur country. Yet it was the eighth day before he came upon a sign
which told him that another living being had at some time passed that
way. What he found were the charred remnants of an old camp-fire. It
had been a white man's fire. He knew that by the size of it. It had
been an all-night fire of green logs cut with an axe.

On the tenth day he came to the westward slope of the