ealised that Mookoomahn and Manikawan were engaged in low and earnest
conversation. This meant, he was sure, that they were going.

He vaguely wondered whether they would take the lodge with them and
leave him to die the more quickly in the intense cold of the open, or
whether they would leave it behind them as a weight now too great to
be hauled farther upon their toboggan.

He did not care much. He was resigned to his fate. He suffered now no
pain of body, save an occasional twitch of the knee when he moved. The
hunger pain had gone. It would be sweet and restful, after all, to lie
there and die peacefully. It would end the struggle for existence.
There would be no more weary plodding over boundless snow wastes. The
end of hope was the end of trouble and pain.

With his acceptance of the inevitable, and resignation to his fate, a
great lassitude fell upon him. He was overcome with a drowsiness, and
as the swish, swish of retreating snowshoes fell upon his ears he
dropped into a heavy sleep.

It must have been hours later when Shad opened his eyes to behold
sitting opposite him, across the fire, Manikawan. She smiled when she
saw that he was awake, and he thought how thin and worn she looked, a
mere shadow of the Manikawan he had first known.

Then there dawned upon his slowly-waking brain a realisation of the
situation. She had resigned her chance of life to remain with him. He
could not permit this. It was a useless waste of life. There was still
hope that she might reach the tilts and safety. By remaining with him
she was deliberately rejecting a possible opportunity to preserve
herself. Much perturbed by this discovery, Shad sat up.

"Mookoomahn?" he asked, pointing toward the south.

"Mookoomahn," she answered, pointing in the same direction.
"Manikawan," pointing at the fire, to indicate that Mookoomahn had
gone but she had remained.

He protested by signs that she should follow Mookoomahn. He passed
around the fire to where she sat, and grasped her arm in his bony
fingers, in an attempt to compel her to do so; but she stubbornly
shook her head, and, forced to submit, he resumed his seat. Both sorry
and glad that he should not be left alone, he reached over and pressed
her hand as an indication of his appreciation of her self-sacrifice.

Then she dipped from a kettle by the fire a cup of liquid, which she
handed him. He sipped it, and, discovering that it was a weak broth,
drank it. He looked at her inq