began to lose confidence. He
realised that if the murderer knew the district and was moving in a
circle purposely, he was doing so in order that he might lure him to
his death. Abandoning all thought of pursuit, his sole endeavour
became to regain the river-bed. He lashed his dogs, urging them
forward to the limit of their strength; but he came to nothing that
was familiar; and, when he paused for breath, he could always hear the
snowshoes following.

Then he awoke to the knowledge that he was lost. His first sensation
was of blank bewilderment, producing in him an utter loss of memory.
He strove to quiet himself, but his will-power refused to operate. Who
he was, and why he was there, he could not remember; of two things
only was he conscious, that he was pursued by something that was evil,
and that he was lost.

A state of chaos reigned within him, which was soon succeeded by an
all-pervading terror. He must escape somehow to safety, to a place
where there were men. He longed to dash on somewhere, on and on; but
he was paralysed by his utter inability to think consecutively or to
choose out any particular direction. He began to see horrible
contorted shapes about him, and to imagine modes of death which were
still more horrible. He might die of starvation, he might die of
thirst, he might die of frost; but his worst fear was of something
which he would never see, which would steal softly up, when he was too
cold to turn his head, and strike him from behind. He circled round
and round to avoid the blow; but he felt that, as he moved, the thing
moved keeping pace with him, so that, for all his alertness, it was
always behind his back.

In a way in which he had never desired it before, he longed for human
companionship--just to look once more upon a living face. And to all
these fears and yearnings there was the undertow of an added
horror--the terror lest he should become insane. He burst into a
passion of weeping; as the tears fell they froze upon his face. The
air was thick with snow which the rising wind drifted about, driving
it into curious and fantastic shapes. Had he been more quiet, he would
have known that his only wise plan was to lie down until the blizzard
was past. It would bury him, but as a covering it would act as a
blanket to keep him warm. The blizzard seemed to him to be hemming him
in, building up about him a shifting wall through which the pursuer
could attack him unseen.

Always he was consc