ountry no
white man had ever seen, on his bold gamble for food or an endless sleep
in the blue Ungava hills.

In his weakened state, black spots and pin-points of light danced before
his eyes. Distant objects were often magnified out of all proportion. So
intense was the glare of the high March sun on the crust that his wooden
goggles alone saved him from snow-blindness. He travelled a few miles
until dizziness forced him to rest. Later he continued on, to rest
again, while the black nose of Fleur, who was still comparatively
strong, sought his face, as she wondered at the reason for the master's
strange actions.

By noon he had crossed no trail except that of a wolverine seeking food
like himself, and finally went down into the timbered valley of a brook
where he left Fleur and the sled. Then he started again on his hopeless
search. As the streams flowed northeast, he was certain that he had
crossed the Height of Land to the Ungava Bay watershed, and was now in
the headwater country of the fabled River of Leaves, the Koksoak of the
Esquimos, into which no hunter from Whale River had ever penetrated.

Marcel was snow-shoeing through the scrub at the edge of the plateau
when far out on the barren he saw two spots. Shortly he was convinced
that the objects moved.

"By Gar, deer! At last they travel nord!" he gasped, gazing with
bounding pulses at the distant spots almost indistinguishable against
the snow. Meat out there on the barren awaited him--food and life, if
only he could get within range.

Cutting back into the scrub, that he might begin his stalk of the
caribou from the nearest cover with the wind in his face, he moved
behind a rise in the ground slowly out into the barren. With a caution
he had never before exercised, lest the precious food now almost within
reach should escape him, the starving man advanced.

At last he crawled up behind a low knoll, and stretched out on the snow.
Cocking and thrusting his rifle before him, he wormed his way to the
top of the rise and looked.

There a hundred yards off, playing on the crust, were two arctic foxes.
Distorting their size, the barren ground mirage had cruelly deceived
him.

With a groan the spent hunter dropped his head on his arms. "All dees
for fox!" he murmured. Then, because foxes were meat, he took careful
aim and shot one, wounding the other, which he killed with the second
bullet. Hanging the carcasses in a spruce, Marcel continued to skirt the
b