ring forth from a
sea of carmine. Harder and swifter the wind swept about them; its
force greater than the slight form of the woman could resist. Close
went Houston to her; his arm encircled her--and she did not resist--she
who, down there in the west country in the days that had gone, would
have rebelled at the touch of his hand! But now they were in a strange
land where personalities had vanished; two beings equipped with human
intelligence and the power of locomotion, little more. All else in
their natures had become subjugated to the greater tasks which faced
them; the primitive had come to life; they were fighting against every
vengeful weapon which an outraged Nature could hurl,--fighting at
cross-purposes, he to fulfill a promise to a woman who might even now
be dead, she to assuage the promptings of a merciful nature, even to
the extent of the companionship of a man she had been led to revile.

Afternoon came, and the welcome shelter of a ledge where the snow had
drifted far outward, leaving a small space of dry rock,--to them like
an island to a drifting victim of shipwreck. There they stopped, to
bring food from the small provision pack which had been shifted to
Medaine's shoulders, to eat silently, then, without a word, to rise and
go onward.

Miles and miles,--rods in fact. Aeons of space after that, in which
huddled, bent figures in the grip of stormdom, climbed, veering,
swinging about the easier stretches, crawling at painfully slow pace up
the steeper inclines. Upward through the stinging blast of the tempest
they went, toward the top of a stricken world. Late afternoon; then
Medaine turned toward the bleeding man beside her.

"A mile more."

She said no more. He nodded in answer and extended a hand to aid her
over a slippery stretch of ice-coated granite. Timber line came and
went. The snowfall ceased, to give way to the grayness of heavy,
scudding clouds and the spasmodic flurries of driving white, as the
gusty wind caught up the loose fall of the drifts and whirled it on,
like harassed, lost souls seeking in vain a place they could abide.
And it was in one of the moments of quiet that Medaine pointed above.

Five splotches showed on the mountain side,--the roofs of as many
cabins; the rest of them were buried in snow. No smoke came from the
slanting chimneys; no avenues were shoveled to the doorways; the drifts
were unbroken.

"Gone!" Houston voiced the monosyllable.

"Yes. Proba