eep snow he would have been helpless. Growing fainter at every
moment, he struggled in the deadly chill of the water for four or five
minutes before at last he succeeded in bringing them up end first, as
they had gone down.

When he staggered back stiffly upon the snow the very life seemed
withdrawn from his bones. His heavy clothing had frozen into a coat of
mail almost as hard as iron plate. There was no sensation left in his
limbs, and he trembled with a numb shuddering.

Long forest training told him what must be done. He must have a fire
at once. He would have to find a dry birch tree, or a splintered pine
that would light easily.

His benumbed brain clung to this idea, and he began to stumble toward
shore, his snowshoes sheets of ice, and his clothes rattling as he
went. But with a hunter's instinct he stuck to his gun, tucking it
under his icy arm.

He could see no birch tree, and the bank was bordered with an
impenetrable growth of alders. He dragged himself up the river, and
each step seemed to require a more and more intolerable exertion.

He could not feel his feet as he lifted and put them down; when he saw
them moving they looked like things independent of himself. He had
ceased to feel cold. He no longer felt anything, except a deadly
weariness that was crushing him into the snow.

He went on, however, driven by the fighting instinct, till of a sudden
he saw it--the birch tree he was seeking, shining spectrally among the
black spruces by the river.

It was an old, half-dead tree, covered with great curls of bark that
would flare up at the touch of a match. He had matches in a
water-proof box, and he contrived to get them out of his frozen pocket.
He dropped the box half a dozen times in trying to open it, opened it
at last with his teeth, and dropped it again, spilling the matches into
the snow.

Snow is as dry as sand at that temperature, however, and he scraped
them up, and tried to strike one on the gun barrel. But he was unable
to hold the bit of wood in his numbed fingers; there was absolutely no
feeling in his hands, and the match fell from his grasp at every
attempt. This is a familiar peril in the North Woods, where dozens of
men have frozen to death with firewood and matches beside them, from
sheer inability to strike a light.

Mac beat his hands together without effect. He began to grow
indifferent; and as he fumbled again for the dropped match he fell at
full length into