ing spectacle. Everywhere was soft sky-line. The hills were all
low-lying. There were no trees, no shrubs, no grasses--naught but a
tremendous and terrible desolation that sent fear swiftly dawning into
his eyes.

"Bill!" he whispered, once and twice; "Bill!"

He cowered in the midst of the milky water, as though the vastness were
pressing in upon him with overwhelming force, brutally crushing him with
its complacent awfulness. He began to shake as with an ague-fit, till
the gun fell from his hand with a splash. This served to rouse him. He
fought with his fear and pulled himself together, groping in the water
and recovering the weapon. He hitched his pack farther over on his left
shoulder, so as to take a portion of its weight from off the injured
ankle. Then he proceeded, slowly and carefully, wincing with pain, to
the bank.

He did not stop. With a desperation that was madness, unmindful of the
pain, he hurried up the slope to the crest of the hill over which his
comrade had disappeared--more grotesque and comical by far than that
limping, jerking comrade. But at the crest he saw a shallow valley,
empty of life. He fought with his fear again, overcame it, hitched the
pack still farther over on his left shoulder, and lurched on down the
slope.

The bottom of the valley was soggy with water, which the thick moss held,
spongelike, close to the surface. This water squirted out from under his
feet at every step, and each time he lifted a foot the action culminated
in a sucking sound as the wet moss reluctantly released its grip. He
picked his way from muskeg to muskeg, and followed the other man's
footsteps along and across the rocky ledges which thrust like islets
through the sea of moss.

Though alone, he was not lost. Farther on he knew he would come to where
dead spruce and fir, very small and weazened, bordered the shore of a
little lake, the _titchin-nichilie_, in the tongue of the country, the
"land of little sticks." And into that lake flowed a small stream, the
water of which was not milky. There was rush-grass on that stream--this
he remembered well--but no timber, and he would follow it till its first
trickle ceased at a divide. He would cross this divide to the first
trickle of another stream, flowing to the west, which he would follow
until it emptied into the river Dease, and here he would find a cache
under an upturned canoe and piled over with many rocks. And in this
cache would be