ed why it was that Neewa no longer hunted with him, but had
curled himself up into a round ball, and slept a sleep from which he
could not rouse him. Through the long hours of the three days and
nights of storm it was loneliness more than hunger that ate at his
vitals. When on the morning of the fourth day he came out from under
the windfall his ribs were showing and there was a reddish film over
his eyes. First of all he looked south and east, and whined.

Through twenty miles of snow he travelled back that day to the ridge
where he had left Neewa. On this fourth day the sun shone like a
dazzling fire. It was so bright that the glare of the snow pricked his
eyes, and the reddish film grew redder. There was only a cold glow in
the west when he came to the end of his journey. Dusk had already begun
to settle over the roofs of the forests when he reached the ridge where
Neewa had found the cavern. It was no longer a ridge. The wind had
piled the snow up over it in grotesque and monstrous shapes. Rocks and
bushes were obliterated. Where the mouth of the cavern should have been
was a drift ten feet deep. Cold and hungry, thinned by his days and
nights of fasting, and with his last hope of comradeship shattered by
the pitiless mountains of snow, Miki turned back over his trail. There
was nothing left for him now but the old windfall, and his heart was no
longer the heart of the joyous comrade and brother of Neewa, the bear.
His feet were sore and bleeding, but still he went on. The stars came
out; the night was ghostly white in their pale fire; and it was
cold--terribly cold. The trees began to snap. Now and then there came a
report like a pistol-shot as the frost snapped at the heart of timber.
It was thirty degrees below zero. And it was growing colder. With the
windfall as his only inspiration Miki drove himself on. Never had he
tested his strength or his endurance as he strained them now. Older
dogs would have fallen in the trail or have sought shelter or rest. But
Miki was the true son of Hela, his giant Mackenzie hound father, and he
would have continued until he triumphed--or died.

But a strange thing happened. He had travelled twenty miles to the
ridge, and fifteen of the twenty miles back, when a shelf of snow gave
way under his feet and he was pitched suddenly downward. When he
gathered his dazed wits and stood up on his half frozen legs he found
himself in a curious place. He had rolled completely into a
wigwam-