emperature would continue to fall until
after dawn. The wind still blew the snow dust--a stinging lash from
the north and west--and it had brought the cold from the Bering Sea.

It was curious that a cloudy night could be so cold. Yet when he opened
his eyes he could not see the gleam of a star. The red coals of the
fire, too, were smothered and obscured in ashes. He stepped toward
them, intending to rake them up for such heat as they could yield.
Presently he halted, gazing with fascinated horror at the ground.

He was suddenly struck with a ghastly and terrible possibility. He could
not give it credence, yet the thought seemed to seize and chill him like
a great cold. But he would know the truth in a moment. It was always
his creed: not to spare himself the truth. Surely it would simply be an
interesting story--this of his great fear--when he returned with his
backload of supplies to Virginia. Something to talk about, in the
painful and embarrassed moments that remained before Virginia and her
lover went out of his sight forever.

His hand groped for a match. In his eagerness it broke off at his
fingers as he tried to strike it. But soon he found another.

He heard it crack in the silence, but evidently it was a dud! The
darkness before his eyes remained unbroken.

Filled with a sick fear, he removed his glove and passed his hand over
the upheld match. There was no longer a possibility for doubt. The
tiny flame smarted his flesh.

"Blind!" he cried. "Out here in the snow and the forest--blind!"

It was true. The pungent wood smoke had done a cruel work. Until time
should heal the wounds of the tortured lenses, Bill was blind.

XXIII

Standing motionless in the dreadful gloom of blindness, insensible to
the growing cold, Bill made himself look his situation in the face. His
mind was no longer blunt and dull. It was cool, analytic; he balanced
one thing against another; he judged the per cent. of his chance. At
present it did not occur to him to give up. It is never the way of the
sons of the wilderness to yield without a fight. They know life in all
its travail and pain, but also they know the Cold and Darkness and Fear
that is death. No matter how long the odds are, the wilderness creature
fights to his last breath. Bill had always fought; his life had been a
great war of which birth was the reveille and death would be retreat.

He was wholly self-contained, his mind under perfect