a long way off. And it is very quiet. We
can hear no sound but the beat of our hearts, and in the silence that is
a very loud sound. We are like sleep-walkers, and we walk in dreams
until we fall down; and then we know we must get up, and we see the trail
once more and bear the beating of our hearts. Sometimes, when I am
walking in dreams this way, I have strange thoughts. Why does Sitka
Charley live? I ask myself. Why does Sitka Charley work hard, and go
hungry, and have all this pain? For seven hundred and fifty dollars a
month, I make the answer, and I know it is a foolish answer. Also is it
a true answer. And after that never again do I care for money. For that
day a large wisdom came to me. There was a great light, and I saw clear,
and I knew that it was not for money that a man must live, but for a
happiness that no man can give, or buy, or sell, and that is beyond all
value of all money in the world.

"In the morning we come upon the last-night camp of the man who is before
us. It is a poor camp, the kind a man makes who is hungry and without
strength. On the snow there are pieces of blanket and of canvas, and I
know what has happened. His dogs have eaten their harness, and he has
made new harness out of his blankets. The man and woman stare hard at
what is to be seen, and as I look at them my back feels the chill as of a
cold wind against the skin. Their eyes are toil-mad and hunger-mad, and
burn like fire deep in their heads. Their faces are like the faces of
people who have died of hunger, and their cheeks are black with the dead
flesh of many freezings. 'Let us go on,' says the man. But the woman
coughs and falls in the snow. It is the dry cough where the frost has
bitten the lungs. For a long time she coughs, then like a woman crawling
out of her grave she crawls to her feet. The tears are ice upon her
cheeks, and her breath makes a noise as it comes and goes, and she says,
'Let us go on.'

"We go on. And we walk in dreams through the silence. And every time we
walk is a dream and we are without pain; and every time we fall down is
an awakening, and we see the snow and the mountains and the fresh trail
of the man who is before us, and we know all our pain again. We come to
where we can see a long way over the snow, and that for which they look
is before them. A mile away there are black spots upon the snow. The
black spots move. My eyes are dim, and I must stiffen my soul to see.