evenings they would spend in Muriel Lansing's pretty
drawing-room while he told her what he had done and unfolded his plans
for the future. He could brook no avoidable delay in reading her
message, and, nerving himself for a struggle, he set out again.

The shack vanished the moment he left it. The snow was thicker; and,
floundering heavily through the storm, George had almost given up the
attempt to find the ravine, when he fell violently into a clearer part
of it. Then he gathered courage, for the bluff was large and would be
difficult to miss; but it did not appear when he expected it. He was
breathless, nearly blinded, and on the verge of exhaustion, when he
crashed into a dwarf birch and, looking up half dazed, saw an
indistinct mass of larger trees. He had now a guide, but it was hard
to follow, with his strength fast falling and the savage wind buffeting
him. He had stopped a moment, gasping, when something emerged from the
driving snow. It was moving; it looked like a team with a sledge or
wagon, and he thought that his companions had come in search of him.
He cried out, but there was no answer, and though he tried to run, the
beasts vanished as strangely as they had appeared.

They had, however, left their tracks, coming up from the south, where
the settlement lay, and this convinced him that they had not been
driven by Edgar or Grierson. He made an attempt to overtake them and,
falling, went on again, wondering a little who the strangers could be;
though this was not a matter of much consequence. If they had blankets
or driving-robes, they might pass the night without freezing in the
bluff, where there was fuel; but George was most clearly conscious of
the urgent need for his reaching the homestead before his strength gave
out.

At last he struck the beaten trail which had fortunately not yet been
drifted up, and after keeping to it for a while he saw a faint twinkle
of light in front of him. A voice answered his shout and when he
stopped, keeping on his feet with difficulty and utterly worn out, a
team came up, blurred and indistinct, out of the driving snow. After
that somebody seized him and pushed him toward an empty sledge.

"Get down out of the wind; here's the fur robe!" cried a voice he
recognized. "We came back as soon as we had thrown off the load."

George remembered very little about the remainder of the journey, but
at last the sledge stopped where a warm glow of light shone out i