ers dipped into dry, warm ashes.

Only for a fraction of a second did he fail to understand. And in the
darkness and the silence the man's breath caught in what was almost a
sob. He realized that he had followed the tracks in the wrong
direction, and had traced them straight to the cabin door that he had
just left.

It was only a matter of a hundred feet, but it was tragedy here. Once
more he started on the out-trail.

He soon found that he could not walk in his present stooped position.
Human flesh is not build to stand such a strain as that. Before he had
gone half a mile sharp pains began to attack him, viciously, in the back
and thighs. For all his magnificent strength--largely returned to him
in his hours of rest--he could not progress in this position more than
half a mile farther.

He took another course. He would walk ahead five paces, then drop down
and grope again for the tracks. Sometimes he found them at once, often
he had to go on his hands and feet and start to circle. Then, finding
the trail, he would mush on for five steps more.

Oh, the way was cruel! He could not see to avoid the stinging lash of
the spruce needles, the cruel blows of the branches. Already the
attempt began to partake of a quality of nightmare,--a blind and
stumbling advance over infinite difficulties through the infinity of
time. It was like some torment of an evil Hereafter,--eternal,
remorseless, wholly without hope. Many times he sprawled at full
length, and always it was harder to force himself to his feet.

Five steps on, halting and groping, then five steps more: thus the lone
figure journeyed through the winter forest. The seconds dragged into
the minutes, the minutes into hours. The cold deepened; likely it was
the bitter hour just after dawn. The hand with which he groped for the
tracks had lost all power of feeling.

He could not judge distance or time. Already it seemed to him that he
had been upon the journey endless hours. Because of the faint grayness
before his eyes he judged it was broad daylight: perhaps already the day
was giving over to darkness. He didn't know how far he had come. The
only thought he had left was always to count his terrible five steps,
and count five more.

Nothing else mattered. He had for the moment at least lost sight of all
other things. His thought was not so clear now; it seemed to him that
the forest was no longer silent. There were confused murmurings in his