hese they killed and
dressed. Thus Claire's life was bought for her by the sacrifice of her
progeny.

But even that was a temporary respite. She fell in her turn, and was
devoured, to the last scrap of her hide. Dick again intervened to save
Billy, but failed. Sam issued his orders the more peremptorily as he
felt his strength waning, and realised the necessity of economising
every ounce of it, even to that required in the arguing of expedients.
Dick yielded with slight resistance, as he had yielded in the case of
the girl. All matters but the one were rapidly becoming unimportant to
him. That concentration of his forces which represented the weapon of
his greatest utility, was gradually taking place. He was becoming an
engine of dogged determination, an engine whose burden the older man had
long carried on his shoulders, but which now he was preparing to launch
when his own strength should be gone.

At last there was left but the one dog, Mack, the hound, with the
wrinkled face and the long, hanging ears. He developed unexpected
endurance and an entire willingness, pulling strongly on the sledge,
waiting in patience for his scanty meal, searching the faces of his
masters with his wise brown eyes, dumbly sympathetic in a trouble whose
entirety he could not understand.

The two men took turns in harnessing themselves to the sledge with Mack.
The girl followed at the gee-pole.

May-may-gwan showed the endurance of a man. She made no complaint.
Always she followed, and followed with her mind alert. Where Dick shut
obstinately his faculties within the bare necessity of travel, she and
her other companion were continually alive to the possibilities of
expedient. This constituted an additional slight but constant drain on
their vital forces.

Starvation gained on them. Perceptibly their strength was waning. Dick
wanted to kill the other dog. His argument was plausible. The toboggan
was now very light. The men could draw it. They would have the dog-meat
to recruit their strength.

Sam shook his head. Dick insisted. He even threatened force. But then
the woodsman roused his old-time spirit and fairly beat the young man
into submission by the vehemence of his anger. The effort left him
exhausted. He sank back into himself, and refused, in the apathy of
weariness, to give any explanation.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

By now it was the first week in March. The weather began to assume a new
aspect. During the winter mont