nd dried skull of a
mummy.

Shad laughed sometimes when he looked at Mookoomahn's ghastly face,
framed in a mass of long, straggling black hair; at other times he was
overcome with a heart-rending pity for Mookoomahn that brought tears
to his eyes. But tears froze, and were annoying and painful.

Manikawan, too, had changed woefully. The lean, gaunt figure stalking
along uncomplainingly with Shad and Mookoomahn had small resemblance
to the beautiful, commanding Manikawan that bade Bob and Shad be
patient in their imprisonment on the island until she returned to
relieve them; or the glowing, happy Manikawan that accompanied Shad
and the others to the river tilt after she had accomplished the
rescue. Though there still burned within her an unquenchable fire of
energy, and she never lagged on the trail, she was no longer the
Manikawan of old.

In spite of all the hardships and all the pain, and slowly starving as
she was, she never ceased her attention to Shad, and she never once
lost her patience with him.

When Shad laughed hysterically and derisively at his fate, as he did
sometimes, Manikawan would step to his side, touch him lightly with
her hand, and say in the same old voice, lower than of old, but even
more musical and sweet:

"The friend of White Brother of the Snow is brave. He is not a coward.
He is not afraid to die."

This always had a magical, soothing effect upon Shad. Though he never
learned to interpret her language, the touch of the hand, the human
note of encouragement in her voice, the light in the eyes that looked
into his, never failed to recall him to his manhood and to himself,
and to the remembrance of his vow that as a white man he must by mere
force of will prove his superiority.

All record of time was lost. But the days were visibly lengthening
with each sunrise and sunset, and when the wind did not blow to freeze
them, and the snow did not drift to blind them, the sunshine gave
forth a hint--just a hint--of warmth.

One day the dead silence was suddenly startled by the long-drawn-out
howl of a wolf. It was a blood-curdling and almost human cry, and Shad
likened it to the agonised cry of a lost soul in the depths of eternal
torment. Again and again it sounded, then suddenly ceasing, Shad
discovered the animal itself trotting leisurely after them far in the
rear, and a feeling of fellowship--of pity--welled up in his bosom.

But when he discovered the creature still following them th