racks were clear, made since the
snowstorm, but there was the same favoring of the left foot. He was
traveling in a circle. Sometimes in unsheltered places, where the wind
swept through an avenue of trees, small drifts covered the impressions,
but the dog found them again, still doubling that broad circle. Finally I
saw a great dark blotch ahead where the ground sloped up to a narrow
plateau. And in a moment I saw it was caused by a great many fresh twigs
of spruce, all stuck upright in the snow and set carefully in rows, like a
child's make-believe garden."

Tisdale's voice broke. He was looking off again into the night, and his
face hardened; two vertical lines like clefts divided his brows. It was as
though the iron in the man cropped through. The pause was breathless. Here
and there a grim face worked.

"When the dog reached the spot," Hollis went on, "he gave a quick bark and
ran with short yelps towards a clump of young trees a few yards off. The
rim of a drift formed a partial windbreak, but he had only a low bough to
cover him,--and the temperature,--along those ice-peaks--"

His voice failed. There was another speaking silence. It was as though
these men, having followed all those hundreds of miles over tundra and
mountains, through thaw and frost, felt with him in that moment the
heart-breaking futility of his pursuit. "I tried my best," he added. "I
guess you all know that, but--I was too late."

The warning blast of an automobile cut the stillness, and the machine
stopped in front of the clubhouse, but no one at the table noticed the
interruption.

Then Banks said, in his high key: "But you hitched his dogs up with yours,
the ones that were fit, and brought him through to Seward. You saw him
buried. Thank you for that."

Feversham cleared his throat and reached for the decanter, "Think of it!"
he exclaimed. "A man like that, lost on a main traveled thoroughfare! But
the toll will go on every year until we have a railroad. Here's to that
road, gentlemen. Here's to the Alaska Midway and Home Rule."

The toast was responded to, and it was followed by others. But Tisdale had
left his place to step through the open door to the balcony. Presently
Foster joined him. They stood for an interval smoking and taking in those
small night sounds for which long intimacy with Nature teaches a man to
listen; the distant voice of running water; the teasing note of the
breeze; the complaint of a balsam-laden bough; the