into the deep snow. He
knew well enough that simple trick of the partridge, when frost and
storm grow too ferocious for it. But his wiser spirit would not let
him delude himself. Had he had a full stomach, and food in his
pockets, he might, perhaps, safely have emulated this cunning trick of
the partridge. But now, starving, weary, his vitality at the last ebb,
he knew that if he should yield to the lure of the snow, he would be
seen no more till the spring sun should reveal him, a thing of horror
to the returning vireos and blackbirds, on the open, greening face of
the barren. No, he would not burrow to escape the wind. He laughed
aloud as he thought upon the madness of it; and went butting and
plunging on into the storm, indomitable.

Suddenly, however, he stopped short, with a great sinking at his
heart. He felt cautiously this way and that, first with his feet,
fumbling through the deep snow, and then with his hands. At last he
turned his back abruptly to the wind, cowered down with his head
between his arms to shut out the devilish whistling and whining, and
tried to think how or when it had happened. He had lost the trail of
the herd!

All his faculties stung to keen wakefulness by this appalling
knowledge, he understood how it happened, but not where. The drifts
had filled the trail, till it was utterly blotted off the face of the
plain; then he had kept straight on, guided by the pressure of the
wind. But the caribou, meanwhile, had swerved, and moved off in
another direction. Which direction? He had to acknowledge to himself
that he had no clue to judge by, so whimsical were these antlered
vagrants of the barren. Well, he thought doggedly, let them go! He
would get along without them. Staggering to his feet, he faced the
gale again, and thought hard, striving to remember what the direction
of the wind had been when last he observed it, and at the same time to
recall the lay of the heavy-timbered forest that skirted this barren
on two sides.

At length he made up his mind where the nearest point of woods must
be. He saw it in his mind's eye, a great promontory of black firs
jutting out into the waste. He turned, calculating warily, till the
wind came whipping full upon his left cheek. Sure that he was now
facing his one possible refuge, he again struggled forward. And as he
went, he pictured to himself the whole caribou herd, now half
foundered in the drift, labouring toward the same retreat. Once more,
cr