could conjure no song of
the future. This unearthly calm had always been--the tranquil silence
of eternity.

Their eyes were fixed upon the north. Unseen, behind their backs,
behind the towering mountains to the south, the sun swept toward the
zenith of another sky than theirs. Sole spectators of the mighty
canvas, they watched the false dawn slowly grow. A faint flame began to
glow and smoulder. It deepened in intensity, ringing the changes of
reddish-yellow, purple, and saffron. So bright did it become that
Cuthfert thought the sun must surely be behind it--a miracle, the sun
rising in the north! Suddenly, without warning and without fading, the
canvas was swept clean. There was no color in the sky. The light had
gone out of the day.

They caught their breaths in half-sobs. But lo! the air was aglint with
particles of scintillating frost, and there, to the north, the
wind-vane lay in vague outline of the snow.

A shadow! A shadow! It was exactly midday. They jerked their heads
hurriedly to the south. A golden rim peeped over the mountain's snowy
shoulder, smiled upon them an instant, then dipped from sight again.

There were tears in their eyes as they sought each other. A strange
softening came over them. They felt irresistibly drawn toward each
other. The sun was coming back again. It would be with them tomorrow,
and the next day, and the next.

And it would stay longer every visit, and a time would come when it
would ride their heaven day and night, never once dropping below the
skyline. There would be no night.

The ice-locked winter would be broken; the winds would blow and the
forests answer; the land would bathe in the blessed sunshine, and life
renew.

Hand in hand, they would quit this horrid dream and journey back to the
Southland. They lurched blindly forward, and their hands met--their
poor maimed hands, swollen and distorted beneath their mittens.

But the promise was destined to remain unfulfilled. The Northland is
the Northland, and men work out their souls by strange rules, which
other men, who have not journeyed into far countries, cannot come to
understand.

An hour later, Cuthfert put a pan of bread into the oven, and fell to
speculating on what the surgeons could do with his feet when he got
back. Home did not seem so very far away now. Weatherbee was rummaging
in the cache. Of a sudden, he raised a whirlwind of blasphemy, which in
turn ceased with startling abruptness. The other man ha