despair took him for its own. Like
a monster that had been hungrily awaiting its opportunity with
growing fierceness, it now clutched him by the throat, shook him,
held him helpless in a gigantic terror. Where could he go? What
could he do? How could he find--anything--ever? ... His teeth were
chattering--not from the cold.

And, now, since hope was fled at last, a prophecy of the end
voiced itself in the pangs of hunger, which bit like poison
within him. The demon of starvation leaped upon him, gloating,
gluttonous of the end.

Yet, after an interval of infinite wretchedness, Donald recalled
his vigors, and shook off the lethargy that had bound his spirit.
Once again, he rallied the strength of his manhood, and set his
will to the hopeless strife. Blind, starving, he still gave battle
to the North.

So, after a weary while, the shuddering panic left him, and he set
to work with renewed calm. Following the single method that offered
any possibility of success in his quest for the camp, he spent
exhausting hours in plodding hither and yon through the mazes of
the wood, guiding his courses in what he vainly believed to be
concentric circles, endeavoring by this means to come on the tree
under which he had left his pack, through a process of elimination.
Smaller and smaller the circle grew, until in the end, he found
himself turning about on one spot in the snow. Despite this initial
failure, he repeated the maneuver bravely, only to have his toil
culminate in a second failure. A third effort was equally futile.
Worn by hunger and fatigue, and by the racking emotions of the
situation, his spirit weakened again, so that he sat on his haunches
in a huddled posture of wo, and sobbed like a child in desperation
and self-pity.

Still, though fearfully bruised by the blows of fate, the spirit
of the man was not broken. Into his consciousness, presently, came
the realization that he must not waste another instant of time in
trying to find the pack. To stay where he was until the blindness
should leave him would be to court death by starvation; to go on
would offer at least the remote possibility of encountering some
wandering trapper--though the probability would be of a swifter
ending from the wolves. But the unvarying rule of the trapper is
to go forward--always forward, whatever be the cost. That rule was
in Donald's mind now, and it spurred him to vehement obedience.
... Forward--always forward! With the awkward moveme