t to come back," said Kinnaird. "We shall have to
stay here. What do you suggest?"

Weston looked around him carefully.

"There's a little hollow under the ledge yonder. You should keep
fairly warm there close together with the blankets over you."

Kinnaird demurred to this, but Weston, drawing him aside, spoke
forcibly, and at length he made a sign of acquiescence.

"Well," he said, "no doubt you're right. After all, the great thing is
to keep the warmth in us. Where are you going?"

"I'll find a burrow somewhere within call," said Weston quietly.

He was busy for some little time scraping stones out from the hollow
beneath the ledge, and then he built a rough wall of the larger ones
on two sides of it. After that they got Miss Kinnaird there with some
difficulty, and when she and the others had crept into the shelter and
wrapped the blankets round them, he turned away and stretched himself
out beneath the largest stone he could find. For an hour he lay there
smoking, and then put his pipe away. He had not much tobacco, and it
occurred to him that he might want the little that remained on the
morrow.

In the meanwhile it had grown bitterly cold, and one never feels the
cold so much as when a day's arduous exertion has exhausted the
natural heat of the body. Weston was also very hungry, and after
beating his numbed hands he thrust them inside his deerskin jacket.
They had probably reached no great height, but summer was only
commencing, and it was evidently freezing. Indeed, the nights had been
cold enough when he lay well wrapped up in the sheltered valley.
Still, the mist, at least, climbed no higher. The stars were twinkling
frostily, and opposite him across the valley a great gray-white
rampart ran far up into the dusky blue. He watched it for a while, and
then it seemed to grow indistinct and hazy, and when some time
afterward he opened his eyes again he saw that there was no mist about
the slopes beneath.

Then, as he looked about him, stiff with cold, he noticed that a
half-moon had sailed up above the peaks. Its elusive light lay upon
the slope, but ledge and stone seemed less distinct than their
shadows, which were black as ebony. After that he commenced a struggle
with himself, for, numbed as he was, he did not want to move, which is
one of the insidious effects of cold. It cramps its victim's volition
as well as his body, and makes him shrink from any attempt at the
muscular effort which would make