at the last he had resisted
the temptation of hunger and divided with his dog, in its weakened
condition could not stand the exposure to the loneliness, to the barren
winds of a peopleless world.

A long minute he stood, listening, demanding against all reason to hear
the _crunch, crunch, crunch_ that should tell him he was not alone.
Then, without a glance at the Trail he had followed so long, he turned
back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The girl was lying face down as he had left her. Already the windrow of
the snow was beginning to form, like the curve of a wave about to break
over her prostrate body. He sat down beside her, and gathered her into
his arms, throwing the thick three-point blanket with its warm lining
over the bent forms of both. At once it was as though he had always been
there, his back to the unceasing winds, a permanence in the wilderness.
The struggles of the long, long trail withdrew swiftly into the
past--they had never been. And through the unreality of this feeling
shot a single illuminating shaft of truth: never would he find in
himself the power to take the trail again. The bubbling fever-height of
his energies suddenly drained away.

Mack, the hound, lay patiently at his feet. He, too, suffered, and he
did not understand, but that did not matter; his faithfulness could not
doubt. For a single instant it occurred to the young man that he might
kill the dog, and so procure nourishment with which to extricate himself
and the girl; but the thought drifted idly through his mind, and so on
and away. It did not matter. He could never again follow that Trail, and
a few days more or less--

The girl sighed and opened her eyes. They widened.

"Jibiwanisi!" she whispered.

Her eyes remained fixed on his face, puzzling out the mere facts. Then
all at once they softened.

"You came back," she murmured.

Dick did not reply. He drew her a little closer into his arms.

For a long time they said nothing. Then the girl:

"It has come, Jibiwanisi, we must die," and after a moment, "You came
back."

She closed her eyes again, happily.

"Why did you come back?" she asked after a while.

"I do not know," said Dick.

The snow sifted here and there like beach sand. Occasionally the dog
shook himself free of it, but over the two human beings it flung,
little by little, the whiteness of its uniformity, a warm mantle against
the freezing. They became an integral part of the landscape, permanent
a