lter him from its cutting blasts. If he
missed all these chances, and if worse came to worst, he could always
go to sleep beneath the snow blanket, and it would be better to do that
with the consciousness of having made a good fight than to yield now
like a coward.

All these thoughts flashed through Cabot's mind within the space of a
minute, and, having determined to fight until the battle was either won
or lost, he flung away his now useless burden of firewood and started
off down the wind. Tramping through that newly fallen snow, even with
the support of racquets, was exhausting work, but the effort at least
kept him warm, and, before he came to the end of his strength, some
hours later, he had covered a number of miles. He had also come to the
least promising of the three places he had hoped for, and found himself
in a region of cliffs, precipices, and huge rocks, among which he could
no longer make headway, even though he had not reached the limit of
endurance.

But he had reached that limit, and now only sought a spot in which he
might lie down and go to sleep. Of course the snow would quickly cover
him, and doubtless he would be buried deep ere the fury of the storm
was past. But he had a vague plan for putting his snowshoes over his
head like an inverted V, and hoped in that way to be kept from
smothering. At the same time he had little thought that he should ever
see the light of another day.

"Only a bit further and then I can rest," he muttered, as he pushed
into the blackness of a rift between two tall cliffs, and experienced a
partial relief from the furious wind. It seemed as though he ought to
penetrate this as far as possible, and so he struggled weakly forward.
Then he stumbled over something that lay across his path and fell
heavily. As he lay wondering whether an attempt to regain his feet
would be worth while, he seemed to hear the distant but strenuous
ringing of an electric bell, and almost smiled at the absurdity of such
a fancy in such a place. The thought carried him back to the
electrical laboratory of the Institute, and he began to dream that he
was still a student of ohms, volts, and amperes.

In another moment his consciousness would have been wholly merged in
dreams, but suddenly the place where he lay was filled with a blaze of
light that apparently streamed from the solid rock on either side. So
intense was this light that it penetrated even Cabot's closed eyes, and
aroused