the darkness. The air was thick with swirling clouds of snow driven
before a gale. He made out a dim figure battling its way to the door,
and as the figure approached he discovered it was Walter, but without
the dogs.

"Where are the dogs, Walter?" he asked.

"I didn't bring un, sir," Walter stepped inside and shook the
accumulation of snow from his garments. "'Tis a wonderful nasty
mornin', and I'm thinkin' 'tis too bad to try un before daylight. I've
been watchin' the weather all night, sir. 'Tis growin' worse. We has
only a scratch team and the dog'll not work together right 'till they
gets used to each other. I'm thinkin' we'll have to wait 'till it
comes light."

"You've the team to drive and you know best," conceded the Doctor.
"Under the circumstances I suppose we'll save time by waiting."

"That we will, sir. We'd be wastin' the dogs' strength and ours and
losin' time goin' now. We couldn't get on at all, sir."

"Very well; at daylight."

Walter returned home and Doctor Grenfell to his room to make the most
of the two hours' rest.

It was scarce daylight and Walter had not yet appeared when another
telegram was clicked in over the wires:

"Come along soon. Wife worse."

The storm had increased in fury since Walter's early visit. It was now
blowing a living gale, and the snow was so thick one could scarce
breathe in it. The trail lay directly in the teeth of the storm. No
dogs on earth could face and stem it and certainly not the picked up,
or "scratch" team as Walter called it, for strange dogs never work
well together, and will never do their best by any means for a strange
driver, and Walter had never driven any of these except his own four.

With visions of the suffering woman whose life might depend upon his
presence, the Doctor chafed the forenoon through. Then at midday came
another telegram:

"Come immediately if you can. Wife still holding out."

He had but just read this telegram when, to his astonishment, two
snow-enveloped, bedraggled men limped up to the door.

"Where did you come from in this storm?" he asked, hardly believing
his eyes that men could travel in that drift and gale.

"We comes from Cape Norman, sir, to fetch you," answered one of the
men.

"Fetch me!" exclaimed the Doctor. "Do you believe dogs can travel
against this gale?"

"No, sir, they never could stem it, not 'till the wind shifts,
whatever," said the man. "Us comes with un drivin' from behind. The
gale blow