ply
of food, and now he spent days chopping and splitting wood to burn
during the months he would be snowed-in. He watched for the dark-gray,
fast-scudding storm-clouds, and welcomed them when they came. Once there
lay ten feet of snow on the trails he would be snowed-in until spring.
It would be impossible to go down to Pine. And perhaps during the long
winter he would be cured of this strange, nameless disorder of his
feelings.

November brought storms up on the peaks. Flurries of snow fell in
the park every day, but the sunny south side, where Dale's camp lay,
retained its autumnal color and warmth. Not till late in winter did the
snow creep over this secluded nook.

The morning came at last, piercingly keen and bright, when Dale saw
that the heights were impassable; the realization brought him a poignant
regret. He had not guessed how he had wanted to see Helen Rayner again
until it was too late. That opened his eyes. A raging frenzy of action
followed, in which he only tired himself physically without helping
himself spiritually.

It was sunset when he faced the west, looking up at the pink snow-domes
and the dark-golden fringe of spruce, and in that moment he found the
truth.

"I love that girl! I love that girl!" he spoke aloud, to the distant
white peaks, to the winds, to the loneliness and silence of his prison,
to the great pines and to the murmuring stream, and to his faithful
pets. It was his tragic confession of weakness, of amazing truth, of
hopeless position, of pitiful excuse for the transformation wrought in
him.

Dale's struggle ended there when he faced his soul. To understand
himself was to be released from strain, worry, ceaseless importuning
doubt and wonder and fear. But the fever of unrest, of uncertainty, had
been nothing compared to a sudden upflashing torment of love.

With somber deliberation he set about the tasks needful, and others
that he might make--his camp-fires and meals, the care of his pets and
horses, the mending of saddles and pack-harness, the curing of buckskin
for moccasins and hunting-suits. So his days were not idle. But all this
work was habit for him and needed no application of mind.

And Dale, like some men of lonely wilderness lives who did not
retrograde toward the savage, was a thinker. Love made him a sufferer.

The surprise and shame of his unconscious surrender, the certain
hopelessness of it, the long years of communion with all that was wild,
lonely, an