horizon at all. The dark snow-shadow was lessened by the strong bitter wind that tore through it; and Dick went out, swaying against the blast, and drawing his furs tight round him, to take his bearings. In the unearthly pallor everything looked unnatural. But to Dick it was worse than that. It was unfamiliar. These hooded shapes round him were higher ranges than he had passed; the deep ravine on his left was new; and endless misty slope up which he had probably come in last night's storm was not on the Macphersan trail. At some sharp bend in the trail he had overshot it, and he would have to work back and forth over the ground until he found it. This did not lighten the anger which had gone to bed with him, and he called Andree roughly; and, receiving no answer, strode into the tent, jerking away her pile of deerskin robes.
They were cold and empty, and he went out hurriedly, shouting her name incessantly. The rugged mountain-flanks and snow-swathed distances flung it back at him insolently, and in the following silence terror seized on him. Andree had run away from him; run in her fury or her grief straight into those eternal huge solitudes where she would be no more than a bird blown out to sea on a windy night. He looked round for her snow-shoe tracks, found them where the storm whirled up the powdery snow, fed the dogs and himself, struck camp and prepared to follow her. Had he been certain of his own position he would have gone on to Macpherson for help. But as matters stood he dared not waste time. He believed that she would not go far. The loneliness would soon call her back to him, and in his wrath he knew that he would want to strike her when she came.
With the bleak wind buffeting him and his face cut by the sandy snow-particles he followed up to a bare scrap that launched itself against the sky. She had gone further than he expected. Then, on the snow-wreathed rim of it, he flung himself back with a sharp gasp. Grange's Andree had indeed gone further than he expected. The smudged snow and broken twigs on the edge of the scarp attested it. Dick was unnerved for a moment only. Then he climbed a spruce that lifted near by, hacking off the branches with all the force which he dared put into the
