his pipe and his face wore a sinister look as he took
down a rather sketchy map of the wilds beyond the prairie belt. After
studying it for a time he sank into an attitude of concentrated
thought. The stove crackled, its pipe glowing red, driving snow lashed
the shiplap walls, and the wind moaned drearily about the house. Its
occupant was, however, oblivious to his surroundings and sat very still
in his chair, with pouches under his fixed eyes and his lips set tight.
He looked malignant and dangerous, and perhaps his mental attitude was
not quite normal. Close study and severe physical toil, coupled with
free indulgence, had weakened him; there were drugs he was addicted to
which affected the brain, and he had long been possessed by one fixed
idea. By degrees it had become a mania, and he would stick at nothing
that might help him to carry his purpose out. When at length he got up
with a shiver to throw wood into the stove as the room grew cold, he
thought he saw how his object could be secured.

A month before Clarke spent the evening thinking about them, Blake and
his comrades camped at sunset in a belt of small spruces near the edge
of the open waste that runs back to the Polar Sea. They were worn and
hungry, for the shortage of provisions had been a constant trouble and
such supplies as they obtained from Indians, who had seldom much to
spare, soon ran out. Once or twice they had feasted royally after
shooting a big bull moose, but the frozen meat they were able to carry
did not last long, and again they were threatened with starvation.

It was a calm evening with a coppery sunset flaring across the snow,
but intensely cold, and though they had wood enough and sat close
beside a fire with their ragged blankets wrapped round them they could
not keep warm. Harding and Benson were openly dejected, but Blake had
somehow preserved his cheerful serenity. As usual after finishing
their scanty supper, they began to talk, for during the day
conversation was limited by the toil of the march. By and by Harding
took a few bits of resin out of a bag.

"No good," he said. "It's common fir gum, such as I could gather a
carload of in the forests of Michigan. Guess there's something wrong
with my theory about the effects of extreme cold." Then he took a
larger lump from a neat leather case. "This is the genuine article,
and it's certainly the product of a coniferous tree, while the fellow I
got it from said it was f