olly Roger did not look back. Blindly he stumbled ahead,
counting his footsteps as he went, and shouting Nada's name. Twice
he thought he heard a reply, and each time the will-o'-the-wisp voice
seemed to be still farther ahead of him. Then, with a fiercer blast of
the wind beating upon his back, he stumbled and fell forward upon his
face. His hand reached out and touched the thing that had tripped him.
It was not snow. His naked fingers clutched in something soft and furry.
It was a man's coat. He could feel buttons, a belt, and the sudden
thrill of a bearded face.

He stood up. The wind was wailing off over the Barren again, leaving an
instant of stillness about him. And he shouted:

"Nada--Nada--Nada!"

An answer came so quickly that it startled him, not one voice, but
two--three--and one of them the shrill agonized cry of a woman. They
came toward him as he continued to shout, until a few feet away he could
make out a gray blur moving through the gloom. He went to it, staggering
under the weight of the man he had found in the snow. The blur was
made up of two men dragging a sledge, and behind the sledge was a third
figure, moaning in the darkness.

"I found some one in the snow," Jolly Roger shouted. "Here he is--"

He dropped his burden, and the last of his words were twisted by a fresh
blast of the storm. But the figure behind the sledge had heard, and
Jolly Roger saw her indistinctly at his feet, shielding the man he had
found with her arms and body, and crying out a name which he could not
understand in that howling of the wind. But a thing like cold steel sank
into his heart, and he knew it was not Nada he had found this night on
the Barren. He placed the unconscious man on the sledge, believing he
was dead. The girl was crying out something to him, unintelligible in
the storm, and one of the men shouted in a thick throaty voice which he
could not understand. Jolly Roger felt the weight of him as he staggered
in the wind, fighting to keep his feet, and he knew he was ready to drop
down in the snow and die.

"It's only a step," he shouted. "Can you make it?"

His words reached the ears of the others. The girl swayed through the
darkness and gripped his arm. The two men began to tug at the sledge,
and Jolly Roger seized the rope between them, wondering why there were
no dogs, and faced the driving of the storm. It seemed an interminable
time before he saw the faint glow of the alcohol lamp. The last fifty