pe across
her chest was tugging like some evil-tempered thing. But she did not
dare to rest. The snow was now falling thick and fast; the flakes traced
white spirals and made her head spin, so that she was constantly falling
away to the southwestward and then correcting herself by the compass.
She tried to think how this zig-zagging might affect her course, but the
snow whirls confused her mind and a growing anxiety would not let her
pause to think.

Marjorie felt blinded; it seemed to be snowing inside her eyes so that
she wanted to rub them. Soon the ground must rise to the ridge, she told
herself; it must surely rise. Then the sledge came bumping at her heels
and she perceived that she was going down hill. She consulted the
compass and found she was facing south. She turned sharply to the right
again. The snowfall became a noiseless, pitiless torture to sight and
mind.

The sledge behind her struggled to hold her back, and the snow balled
under her snowshoes. She wanted to stop and rest, take thought, sit for
a moment. She struggled with herself and kept on. She tried walking with
shut eyes, and tripped and came near sprawling. "Oh God!" she cried, "Oh
God!" too stupefied for more [v]articulate prayers. She was leaden with
fatigue.

Would the rise of the ground to the ribs of rock never come?

A figure, black and erect, stood in front of her suddenly, and beyond
appeared a group of black, straight antagonists. She staggered on toward
them, gripping her rifle with some muddled idea of defense, and in
another moment she was brushing against the branches of a stunted fir,
which shed thick lumps of snow upon her feet. What trees were these? Had
she ever passed any trees? No! There were no trees on her way to
Trafford.

At that Marjorie began whimpering like a tormented child. But even as
she wept, she turned her sledge about to follow the edge of the wood.
She was too much downhill, she thought, and must bear up again.

She left the trees behind, made an angle uphill to the right, and was
presently among trees again. Again she left them and again came back to
them. She screamed with anger and twitched her sledge along. She wiped
at the snowstorm with her arm as though to wipe it away; she wanted to
stamp on the universe.

And she ached, she ached.

Suddenly something caught her eye ahead, something that gleamed; it was
exactly like a long, bare, rather pinkish bone standing erect on the
ground. Just because it