nder his throat and the water frozen on
his shoulders, he raised his quivering nose. Beyond those misty bottoms,
to the left, over those storm-swept ridges, lay Freedom Hill.

Halfway down the embankment he cried out again. He had slipped in the
snow and fallen on his leg. Under shelter of the embankment he rested
for a moment, panting as if the night were hot. Then lunging, tottering,
falling, rising again, panting, gasping but with never another cry, old
Frank fought his way up the river bottoms, past the farm of John Davis,
across the field in front of Tom Belcher's store, now a dim smudge in
the blackness--dragged himself over the last ridge, dragged himself
home.

Belly deep in drifted snow he stood at the corner of the lot fence and
surveyed the white distance that lay between him and his kennel--more
unattainable to his weakness than a quarter of a continent had been to
his strength. And while he stood there the roaring of the wind in the
great oaks overhead, the cracking of their naked branches, the swirl of
snow against his nose and in his eyes, bewildered him, and suddenly
something deep within him whispered to him to lie down and rest.

But the sudden terror of death lurked in that whisper and, head dragging
in the snow, he staggered across the yard toward his kennel. In here he
would crawl and hide from that fearful thing that had told him to lie
down in the snow and rest. He reached the kennel, he touched it with his
eager nose, he tried to root his way in between the slats which he had
not known were there. Then gasping and helpless he sat down before it.
The door of his kennel was nailed up. The great hulk of the house loomed
dark and silent above it. Maybe his people were gone!

With this new terror in his heart he fought his way around to the side
of the house. Underneath his master's window he raised his head and
tried to bark. But the wind snatched the muffled sound out of his throat
and hurled it away into the darkness. Once more the still small voice
that terrified even while it soothed pleaded with him to lie down and
rest. Maybe he would have listened now, maybe he would have yielded, if
he had not seen through the living-room curtains the sudden flicker of
firelight on the ceiling. They were not gone--they were only asleep.
Tail wagging strangely as if someone in there had spoken to him, he rose
for the last time and struggled toward the front of the house. At the
corner a gust of wind, waitin