ed to face it on the shelterless prairie.

Still she struggled on, feeling with half-frozen feet for the
depression of the trail, and grappling with a horrible dismay when she
failed to find it for moments together. Indeed, she was never sure to
what extent she guided the team, and how far they headed for the bluff
from mere force of habit, but as the time went by, and there was
nothing before her but the whirling snow, she grew feverishly
apprehensive. The trail was becoming fainter and fainter, and now and
then she could find no trace of it for several minutes.

The horses, however, floundered on, blurred shapes as white as the haze
they crept through, and at length she felt that they were dipping into
a hollow. Then a faint sense of comfort crept into her heart as she
remembered that a shallow ravine which seamed the prairie ran through
the bluff. She called out, and started at the faintness of her voice.
It seemed such a pitifully feeble thing. There was no answer, nothing
but the soft fall of the horses' hoofs and the wail of the wind, but
the latter was reassuring, for the volume of sound suggested that it
was driving through a bluff close by.

A few minutes later she cried out again, and this time she felt the
throbbing of her heart, for a faint sound came out of the whirling
haze. She pulled the horses up, and as she stood still listening, a
blurred object appeared almost in front of them. It shambled forward
in a curious manner, stopped, and moved again, and in another moment or
two Hastings lurched by her with a stagger and sank down into a huddled
white heap on the sled. She turned back towards him, and he seemed to
look up at her.

[Illustration: "It shambled forward in a curious manner."]

"Turn the team," he said.

Agatha did it, and sat down beside him when the horses moved on again.

"A small birch I was chopping fell on me," he said. "I don't know if
it smashed my ankle, or if I twisted it wriggling clear--the thing
pinned me down. It's badly nipped, any way."

He spoke disconnectedly and hoarsely, as if in pain, and Agatha, who
noticed that one of his gum boots was almost ripped to pieces, realised
part of what he must have felt. She knew that nobody held fast
helpless could have withstood that cold for more than a very little
while.

"Oh," she said, "it must have been dreadful!"

"I found a branch," Hastings added. "It helped me, but I fell over
every now and then. Headed for