his veins; he felt able to dare
and to do; the pale aspect of the world went away, and once more he was
Henry Ware, alert, skillful, and always triumphant.

Then he rose again, folded the blanket, and fastened it on his
shoulders. He looked at the snowshoes, but decided that his left ankle,
despite its great improvement, would not stand the strain. He must
break his way through the snow, which was a full three feet in depth.
Fortunately the crust had softened somewhat in the last two or three
days, and he did not have a covering of ice to meet.

He pushed his way for the first time from the lair under the cliff, his
rifle held in his ready hands, in order that he might miss no chance at
game. To an ordinary observer there would have been no such chance at
all. It was merely a grim white wilderness that might have been without
anything living from the beginning. But Henry, the forest runner, knew
better. Somewhere in the snow were lairs much like the one that he had
left, and in these lairs were wild animals. To any such wild animal,
whether panther or bear, the hunter would now have been a fearsome
object, with his hollow cheeks, his sunken fiery eyes, and his thin lips
opening now and then, and disclosing the two rows of strong white teeth.

Henry advanced about a rod, and then he stopped, breathing hard, because
it was desperate work for one in his condition to break his way through
snow so deep. But his ankle stood the strain well, and his courage
increased rather than diminished. He was no longer a cripple confined
to one spot. While he stood resting, he noticed a clump of bushes about
half a rod to his left, and a hopeful idea came to him.

He broke his way slowly to the bushes, and then he searched carefully
among them. The snow was not nearly so thick there, and under the
thickest clump, where the shelter was best, he saw a small round
opening. In an instant all his old vigorous life, all the abounding hope
which was such a strong characteristic of his nature, came back to him.
Already he had triumphed over Indians, Tories, the mighty slope, snow,
ice, crippling, and starvation.

He laid the rifle on the snow and took the ramrod in his right hand. He
thrust his left hand into the hole, and when the rabbit leaped for life
from his warm nest a smart blow of the ramrod stretched him dead at the
feet of the hunter. Henry picked up the rabbit. It was large and yet
fat. Here was food for two meals. In the race bet