them: he put his
fingers in them; touched the frozen blood. The snow before the door was
trodden thick with them--some going, some returning.

"The latch . . . lifted . . ." Suddenly he recalled the figure he had
seen moving upon the hummock, and with a groan he set his face northward
and gave chase. Oh, he was mad for certain! He ran like a madman--
floundering, slipping, plunging in his clumsy moccasins. "Take us the
foxes, the little foxes . . . My beloved put in his hand by the hole of
the door, and my bowels were moved for him . . . I charge you, O
daughters of Jerusalem . . . I charge you . . . I charge you . . ."

He ran thus for three hundred yards maybe, and then stopped as suddenly
as he had started.

His mates--they must not see these footprints, or they would go mad too:
mad as he. No, he must cover them up, all within sight of the hut.
And to-morrow he would come alone, and cover those farther afield.
Slowly he retraced his steps. The footprints--those which pointed
towards the hut and those which pointed away from it--lay close
together; and he knelt before each, breaking fresh snow over the hollows
and carefully hiding the blood. And now a great happiness filled his
heart; interrupted once or twice as he worked by a feeling that someone
was following and watching him. Once he turned northwards and gazed,
making a telescope of his hands. He saw nothing, and fell again to his
long task.

Within the hut the sick man cried softly to himself. Faed, the Snipe,
and Cooney slept uneasily, and muttered in their dreams. The Gaffer lay
awake, thinking. After Bill, George Lashman; and after George? . . .
Who next? And who would be the last--the unburied one? The men were
weakening fast; their wits and courage coming down at the end with a
rush. Faed and Long Ede were the only two to be depended on for a day.
The Gaffer liked Long Ede, who was a religious man. Indeed he had a
growing suspicion that Long Ede, in spite of some amiable laxities of
belief, was numbered among the Elect: or might be, if interceded for.
The Gaffer began to intercede for him silently; but experience had
taught him that such "wrestlings," to be effective, must be noisy, and
he dropped off to sleep with a sense of failure . . .

The Snipe stretched himself, yawned, and awoke. It was seven in the
morning: time to prepare a cup of tea. He tossed an armful of logs on
the fire, and the noise awoke the Gaffer, who at once