ttle
sticks. He felt that it lay off to the left somewhere, not far--possibly
just over the next low hill.

He went back to put his pack into shape for travelling. He assured
himself of the existence of his three separate parcels of matches, though
he did not stop to count them. But he did linger, debating, over a squat
moose-hide sack. It was not large. He could hide it under his two
hands. He knew that it weighed fifteen pounds,--as much as all the rest
of the pack,--and it worried him. He finally set it to one side and
proceeded to roll the pack. He paused to gaze at the squat moose-hide
sack. He picked it up hastily with a defiant glance about him, as though
the desolation were trying to rob him of it; and when he rose to his feet
to stagger on into the day, it was included in the pack on his back.

He bore away to the left, stopping now and again to eat muskeg berries.
His ankle had stiffened, his limp was more pronounced, but the pain of it
was as nothing compared with the pain of his stomach. The hunger pangs
were sharp. They gnawed and gnawed until he could not keep his mind
steady on the course he must pursue to gain the land of little sticks.
The muskeg berries did not allay this gnawing, while they made his tongue
and the roof of his mouth sore with their irritating bite.

He came upon a valley where rock ptarmigan rose on whirring wings from
the ledges and muskegs. Ker--ker--ker was the cry they made. He threw
stones at them, but could not hit them. He placed his pack on the ground
and stalked them as a cat stalks a sparrow. The sharp rocks cut through
his pants' legs till his knees left a trail of blood; but the hurt was
lost in the hurt of his hunger. He squirmed over the wet moss,
saturating his clothes and chilling his body; but he was not aware of it,
so great was his fever for food. And always the ptarmigan rose,
whirring, before him, till their ker--ker--ker became a mock to him, and
he cursed them and cried aloud at them with their own cry.

Once he crawled upon one that must have been asleep. He did not see it
till it shot up in his face from its rocky nook. He made a clutch as
startled as was the rise of the ptarmigan, and there remained in his hand
three tail-feathers. As he watched its flight he hated it, as though it
had done him some terrible wrong. Then he returned and shouldered his
pack.

As the day wore along he came into valleys or swales where game was more
plent