o effort of his seemed to have power to
dispel it. As he moved along beside his dogs he would shoot swift,
fearful glances at the heights above, or back over the trail, or on
ahead to some deep, dark gorge they might be approaching. He grew
irritable. The darkness of the woods would sometimes hold his attention
for hours, while the expression of his eyes would tell of the strange
thoughts passing behind them. And Ralph, though more unemotional than
his brother, was scarcely less affected. It was startling in such men,
yet was it hardly to be wondered at in so overpowering a waste.

It was still the morning of the second day. Nick's whip had been silent
for a long time. His eyes were gazing out afar. Sometimes up at the
lowering sky, where the peaks were lost in a sea of dark cloud,
sometimes down, with a brooding fire, into the forest depths. Ralph had
observed the change in his brother and sympathy prompted him to draw up
alongside him.

"What's ailin' ye?" he asked.

Nick shook his head; he could not say that anything ailed him.

"Thought, maybe ther' was somethin' amiss," went on his brother,
half-apologetically. He felt himself that he must talk.

Then Nick was seized with a desire to confide in the only lifelong
friend he had ever known.

"Ther' ain't nothin' amiss, zac'ly," he said. And he got no farther.

"Hah!"

Ralph looked round sharply. It seemed as if something were stirring
about him. He waited expectantly. There was nothing unusual in sight. A
wild panorama of snowy grandeur; mountain and valley and wood, that was
all.

They traipsed on in silence, but now they journeyed side by side. Both
men were strangely moved. Both had heard of the "Dread of the Wild," but
they would have scoffed at the idea of its assailing them. But the
haunting clung, and at each step they felt that the next might be the
signal for a teeming spirit life to suddenly break up the dreadful calm.

They passed a hollow where the snow was unusually deep and soft. The
dogs laboured wearily. They reached the rising end of it, and toiled up
the sharp ascent. The top was already in sight and a fresh vista of the
interminable peaks broke up their view. Without apparent reason Nick
suddenly drew up and a sharp exclamation broke from him. The dogs lay
down in the traces, and both men gazed back into the hollow they had
left. Nick towered erect, and, with eyes staring, pointed at a low hill
on the other side of it.

Ralph followed