meet him.

It was a face, a fierce, bearded face, the gaunt starvation in it hidden
by his own blindness. It seemed like the face of an ogre, terrible,
threatening, and he knew that it was the face of William DeBar, the
seventh brother.

He launched himself forward, and the other launched himself forward, and
they met in a struggle which was pathetic in its weakness, and rolled
together to the bottom of the drift. Yet the struggle was no less
terrible because of that weakness. It was a struggle between two
lingering sparks of human life and when these two sparks had flickered
and blazed and died down, the two men lay gasping, an arm's reach from
each other.

Philip's eyes went to the fire. It was a small fire, burning more
brightly as he looked, and he longed to throw himself upon it so that
the flames might eat into his flesh. He had mumbled something about
police, arrest and murder during the struggle, but DeBar spoke for the
first time now.

"You're cold," he said.

"I'm freezing to death," said Philip.

"And I'm--starving."

DeBar rose to his feet. Philip drew himself together, as if expecting an
attack, but in place of it DeBar held out a warmly mittened hand.

"You've got to get those clothes off--quick--or you'll die," he said.
"Here!"

Mechanically Philip reached up his hand, and DeBar took him to his
sledge behind the fire and wrapped about him a thick blanket. Then he
drew out a sheath knife and ripped the frozen legs of his trousers up
and the sleeves of his coat down, cut the string of his shoe-packs and
slit his heavy German socks, and after that he rubbed his feet and legs
and arms until Philip began to feel a sting like the prickly bite of
nettles.

"Ten minutes more and you'd been gone," said DeBar.

He wrapped a second blanket around Philip, and dragged the sledge on
which he was lying still nearer to the fire. Then he threw on a fresh
armful of dry sticks and from a pocket of his coat drew forth something
small and red and frozen, which was the carcass of a bird about the
size of a robin. DeBar held it up between his forefinger and thumb, and
looking at Philip, the flash of a smile passed for an instant over his
grizzled face.

"Dinner," he said, and Philip could not fail to catch the low chuckling
note of humor in his voice. "It's a Whisky Jack, man, an' he's the first
and last living thing I've seen in the way of fowl between here and Fond
du Lac. He weighs four ounces if he weighs