ning.

Another day of fog. Half of his last blanket had gone into
foot-wrappings. He failed to pick up Bill's trail. It did not matter.
His hunger was driving him too compellingly--only--only he wondered if
Bill, too, were lost. By midday the irk of his pack became too
oppressive. Again he divided the gold, this time merely spilling half of
it on the ground. In the afternoon he threw the rest of it away, there
remaining to him only the half-blanket, the tin bucket, and the rifle.

An hallucination began to trouble him. He felt confident that one
cartridge remained to him. It was in the chamber of the rifle and he had
overlooked it. On the other hand, he knew all the time that the chamber
was empty. But the hallucination persisted. He fought it off for hours,
then threw his rifle open and was confronted with emptiness. The
disappointment was as bitter as though he had really expected to find the
cartridge.

He plodded on for half an hour, when the hallucination arose again. Again
he fought it, and still it persisted, till for very relief he opened his
rifle to unconvince himself. At times his mind wandered farther afield,
and he plodded on, a mere automaton, strange conceits and whimsicalities
gnawing at his brain like worms. But these excursions out of the real
were of brief duration, for ever the pangs of the hunger-bite called him
back. He was jerked back abruptly once from such an excursion by a sight
that caused him nearly to faint. He reeled and swayed, doddering like a
drunken man to keep from falling. Before him stood a horse. A horse! He
could not believe his eyes. A thick mist was in them, intershot with
sparkling points of light. He rubbed his eyes savagely to clear his
vision, and beheld, not a horse, but a great brown bear. The animal was
studying him with bellicose curiosity.

The man had brought his gun halfway to his shoulder before he realized.
He lowered it and drew his hunting-knife from its beaded sheath at his
hip. Before him was meat and life. He ran his thumb along the edge of
his knife. It was sharp. The point was sharp. He would fling himself
upon the bear and kill it. But his heart began its warning thump, thump,
thump. Then followed the wild upward leap and tattoo of flutters, the
pressing as of an iron band about his forehead, the creeping of the
dizziness into his brain.

His desperate courage was evicted by a great surge of fear. In his
weakness, what if t