wayed his emotions in these
final stages of the Death Trail. Somehow, the matches had come to
be his obsession. His physical agony was felt through a blessed
medium of apathy now; it was become something curiously remote,
almost impersonal. Always, his consciousness was filled with a
morbid counting of the matches, the measure of his life. So, when
there was only the one, he felt that the end was, indeed, come upon
him. He strove his mightiest, but his might was shrunken to a puny
sham. He struggled forward valiantly, but his advance was like the
progress of a snail. Then, suddenly, another step became an infinite
labor--something of which he could not even think. He lurched
forward, and fell against a tree-trunk. The concussion aroused him
to a clearer understanding. Very slowly, with a dreadful clumsiness
of movement, he hacked off fragments of the bark within his reach,
piled them in readiness, struck the match, and set it to the loose
fibers. It never occurred to him that this last match might fail.
And it did not. Its tiny flame grew in seconds to a cheery, crackling
blaze. Donald, on his knees, with hands outspread like a worshiper
in adoration before his god--as In truth he was!--felt the penetrant
vibrations of the fire with an inexpressible languor of bliss.
This was the last match--the end! But what matter? The lethargy of
utter exhaustion dulled familiar suffering. The obsession of the
match still held its mastery, and its expression was the hot flame
that breathed on him. Donald had no thought of death now, though
vaguely he knew that he was prone at the feet of death. It mattered
not. Nothing mattered any more--nothing save this luxury of warmth
that was shed upon him from the last match; this luxury of warmth,
and that other luxury of sleep, which stole upon him now so softly,
so caressingly.

CHAPTER VII

JEAN PUTS IT UP TO HER FATHER

Jean Fitzpatrick rose from the breakfast-table at Fort Severn, and
asked for the Winnipeg papers. Three days before, the mail-carrier
had dashed in with dogs on the gallop, and ever since the white
folk at the fort had been having a riot of joy. Months-old letters
from almost forgotten friends, and papers many weeks behind their
dates had been perused over and over again, until they could almost
be recited from memory.

Tongues wagged in gossip over personages perhaps dead by this time,
and sage opinions settled questions that had long since passed from
the min