lieved the great secret of it all lay
awaiting his discovery. Nothing else, then, was of any significance.

For the moment Nature seemed bent on favouring him. For over two hundred
miles she had beaten him well-nigh breathless. She had hurled her storms
at him without mercy, and, at the end of her transcendent fury, she had
found him undismayed, undefeated. Perhaps his tenacity excited her
admiration. Perhaps she was nursing her wrath for a more terrible
onslaught. Whatever her mood he was ready to face it.

At the beginning of the third week since leaving the shelter on the
river Steve trod the first of the western hills under foot, and awaited
the coming of the train upon its summit. His dark, fur-clad figure stood
out in relief against the world about him. It looked squat, it was
utterly dwarfed in the twilit vastness. But there was something
tremendous in the meaning of that living presence in the voiceless
solitudes which the ages have failed to stir.

* * * * *

The sleds were still. The dogs lay sprawled for rest awaiting the will
of their masters. Julyman stood abreast of Steve, tall, lean, but bulky
in his frosted furs. Oolak stood over his dogs, which were his first
care.

"You can feel it now," Steve said, thrusting a hand under his fur
helmet. A moment later he withdrew fingers that were moist with sweat.
"If the wind came down at us out of the hills now we'd need to quit our
furs. Do you get that? Quit our furs here in the dead of winter. It's
getting warmer every mile."

"It warm. Much warm. Oh, yes."

Julyman's resources of imagination were being sorely taxed.

Steve nodded.

"Yes," he said. "It isn't wind now. There's no wind. It's the air. It's
warm. It's getting warmer. Later it'll get hot as hell."

He drew a profound breath. He felt that victory was very near. It only
needed----

"We got to beat on all we know," he said, examining the brilliant
heavens. "We need to grab every moment of this weather. We don't know.
We can't guess the things waiting on us. Yes. We'll 'mush' on."

His tones were deep. The restraint of years which the Northland had bred
into him was giving way before the surge of a hope that was almost
certainty. And his order was obeyed by men who knew no law but his will.

But for all the urgency of his mandate, for all his efforts, progress
slackened from the moment the first hill was passed. From the seemingly
limitless plains of snow, r