eathery, clogging
snow,--offering slight resistance, it is true, but opposing that slight
resistance continuously, so that at last it amounted to a great deal. A
step taken meant no advance toward easier steps. The treadmill of forest
travel, changed only in outward form, again claimed their dogged
patience.

At noon they paused in the shelter of the woods. The dogs were anchored
by the simple expedient of turning the sledge on its side. A little fire
of dried spruce and pine branches speedily melted snow in the kettle,
and that as speedily boiled tea. Caribou steak, thawed, then cooked over
the blaze, completed the meal. As soon as it was swallowed they were off
again before the cold could mount them.

The inspiration and uplift of the morning were gone; the sun was
sinking to a colder and colder setting. All the vital forces of the
world were running down. A lethargy seized our travellers. An effort was
required merely to contemplate treading the mill during the three
remaining hours of daylight, a greater effort to accomplish the first
step of it, and an infinite series of ever-increasing efforts to make
the successive steps of that long afternoon. The mind became weary. And
now the North increased by ever so little the pressure against them,
sharpening the cold by a trifle; adding a few flakes' weight to the snow
they must lift on their shoes; throwing into the vista before them a
deeper, chillier tone of gray discouragement; intensifying the
loneliness; giving to the winds of desolation a voice. Well the great
antagonist knew she could not thus stop these men, but so, little by
little, she ground them down, wore away the excess of their vitality,
reduced them to grim plodding, so that at the moment she would hold them
weakened to her purposes. They made no sign, for they were of the great
men of the earth, but they bent to the familiar touch of many little
fingers pushing them back.

Now the sun did indeed swing to the horizon, so that there remained
scant daylight.

"Chac, Billy!" cried Sam, who again wielded the whip.

Slowly, wearily, the little party turned aside. In the grove of spruce
the snow clung thick and heavy. A cold blackness enveloped them like a
damp blanket. Wind, dying with the sun, shook the snow from the trees
and cried mournfully in their tops. Gray settled on the landscape,
palpable, real, extinguishing the world. It was the second dreadful hour
of the day, the hour when the man, weary, d