the withering blast of
satanic fires. There is nought for him but possession; possession of the
woman he seeks.

To his distraught fancy, his cries receive answer, and he stumbles
blindly on. Meanwhile the wolves draw ever nearer and nearer, as their
courage rises in response to the voice of their famished bellies. So the
strange pursuit goes on, on; over hills and through valleys, now scaling
barren, snow-clad rocks, now clambering drearily down jagged rifts of
earth; over Nature's untrodden trails, or along beaten paths made by the
passage of forest beasts. Through clearing and brake, and over the
rotting ice which fills the bed of the mountain torrent. On, on into
Nature's dim recesses, where only the forest creatures lord it, and the
feet of man have never been set.

At length the forests disappear and the magnificent heights rear their
snowy crests thousands of feet skywards. The valleys are left, and
behind him and below the forests form but a dark shadow of little
meaning. The greatness is about him; the magnitude of the higher
mountain world. As he faces the unfathomed heights he again treads the
snow, for the warm embrace of Spring has not yet enfolded the higher
lands, and the gracious influence of the woods is no longer to be felt.

He pauses, breathing hard, and the expression of his wounded face is not
pleasant. The flesh is blue, and the eyes are as fierce as the crouching
puma's. He looks about him as one in a daze. The baying of the wolves
comes up from below. They still dog him, for the blood trail holds them
fast. A ledge stretches away, winding upwards; a mass of tumbled rocks
foot one towering, solitary pine, and beyond is blank snow.

For the moment he is lost, his vision has deserted him. It may be that
weariness has overcome the power of his illusion, for he stares vacantly
about. He looks back, and the breadth of what he sees conveys no
meaning. The woods, with the sound of life coming up to him in deadly
monotony of tone; the hills, beyond, rising till the sun, like a ball of
deep red fire, seems to rest upon their now lurid glacial fields, but is
powerless to break their icy bondage; these things he sees but heeds
not. Beyond, far into the hazy distance, stretch hills in their
hundreds; incalculable, remote, all bearing the ruddy tint of sunset; a
ghostly array, chaotic, overwhelming to the brain of man. But the scene
has no significance to him. His eyes are the eyes of a man dead to all
bu