ceased to alarm him as he had been alarmed at first. He went on,
hour after hour, weaker and weaker. Within himself there was still life
which reasoned that if death were to come it could not come in a better
way. It at least promised to be painless--even pleasant. The sharp,
stinging pains of hunger, like little electrical knives piercing him, were
gone; he no longer experienced a sensation of intense cold; he almost felt
that he could lie down in the drifted snow and sleep peacefully. He knew
what it would be--a sleep without end--with the arctic foxes to pick his
bones, and so he resisted the temptation and forced himself onward. The
storm still swept straight west from Hudson's Bay, bringing with it endless
volleys of snow, round and hard as fine shot; snow that had at first seemed
to pierce his flesh, and which swished past his feet, as if trying to trip
him, and tossed itself in windrows and mountains in his path. If he could
only find timber--shelter! That was what he worked for now. When he had
last looked at his watch it was nine o'clock in the morning; now it was
late in the afternoon. It might as well have been night. The storm had long
since half blinded him. He could not see a dozen paces ahead. But the
little life in him still reasoned bravely. It was a heroic spark of life, a
fighting spark, and hard to put out. It told him that when he came to
shelter be would at least _feel_ it, and that he must fight until the last.
And all this time, for ages and ages it seemed to him, he kept mumbling
over and over again Ransom's words:

_"Go back--Go back--Go back---"_

They rang in his brain. He tried to keep step with their monotone. The
storm could not drown them. They were meaningless words to him now, but
they kept him company. Also, his rifle was meaningless, but he clung to it.
The pack on his back held no significance and no weight for him. He might
have travelled a mile or ten miles an hour and he would not have sensed the
difference. Most men would have buried themselves in the snow, and died in
comfort, dreaming the pleasant dreams which come as a sort of recompense to
the unfortunate who die of starvation and cold. But the fighting spark
commanded Roscoe to die upon his feet, if he died at all. It was this spark
which brought him at last to a bit of timber thick enough to give him
shelter from wind and snow. It burned a little more warmly then. It flared
up, and gave him new vision. And, for the first tim