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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
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