eat his flesh raw," I said, patting the
poor yak that lay patiently at our side.

"Perhaps we may find game in the morning," answered Leo, still hopeful.

"And perhaps we may not, in which case we must die."

"Very good," he replied, "then let us die. It is the last resource of
failure. We shall have done our best."

"Certainly, Leo, we shall have done our best, if sixteen years of
tramping over mountains and through eternal snows in pursuit of a dream
of the night can be called best."

"You know what I believe," he answered stubbornly, and there was silence
between us, for here arguments did not avail. Also even then I could not
think that all our toils and sufferings would be in vain.

The dawn came, and by its light we looked at one another anxiously,
each of us desiring to see what strength was left to his companion. Wild
creatures we should have seemed to the eyes of any civilized person.
Leo was now over forty years of age, and certainly his maturity had
fulfilled the promise of his youth, for a more magnificent man I never
knew. Very tall, although he seemed spare to the eye, his girth matched
his height, and those many years of desert life had turned his muscles
to steel. His hair had grown long, like my own, for it was a protection
from sun and cold, and hung upon his neck, a curling, golden mane, as
his great beard hung upon his breast, spreading outwards almost to
the massive shoulders. The face, too--what could be seen of it--was
beautiful though burnt brown with weather; refined and full of thought,
sombre almost, and in it, clear as crystal, steady as stars, shone his
large grey eyes.

And I--I was what I have always been--ugly and hirsute, iron-grey now
also, but in spite of my sixty odd years, still wonderfully strong, for
my strength seemed to increase with time, and my health was perfect. In
fact, during all this period of rough travels, although now and again
we had met with accidents which laid us up for awhile, neither of us
had known a day of sickness. Hardship seemed to have turned our
constitutions to iron and made them impervious to every human ailment.
Or was this because we alone amongst living men had once inhaled the
breath of the Essence of Life?

Our fears relieved--for notwithstanding our foodless night, as yet
neither of us showed any signs of exhaustion--we turned to contemplate
the landscape. At our feet beyond a little belt of fertile soil, began
a great desert of the sort wi