or the frost scarred her skin; and always the weight of the snow drew at her knees until one day it drew her down into it and she lay still. Dick was shaking her when she came back to understanding again, and she believed that his eyes were softer. But it might have been that her dulled senses made them seem so.
"It would have been kinder to leave you there, Grange's Andree," he said. "But I have never been kind to you, have I?"
"Peut-être one day you be kind again," she said, and fell into step once more.
That day came when only two dogs hauled the sled which held little more than the kettle, the deer-skin robes, and the raw hides which Dick gave the famished animals to chew on at a halt. It was the Indian in Andree which had kept her up so long. But the more volatile French blood was failing. It gave way at last when, on a gentle slope by a thick clump of firs, her courage failed, and she slid down in the snow.
Something which he did not understand made Dick turn. Then he went back to her, dropping the harness with which he helped the dogs to pull. She looked up at him—gladly, as he thought.
"No more, Dick," she said. "No more."
He gathered her in his arms and carried her into the comparative warmth of the spreading firs. Here he made camp; lighting a large fire, and wrapping her in the deer robes.
"Mais—j'ai froid," she whispered; and he drew her close into his arms beside the fire, although there was little heat in his starved body to strengthen hers. She smiled slightly, with her eyes shut, and he looked down on her unflinchingly.
The men who had loved her would not have recognised Grange's Andree now. Hunger and privation had done their work. The dog's meat had caused sores to break out on the skin of both, and their lips were cracked deeply, and their skin peeling in places. But on the girl's face was a content that did not show in the man's. Dick remembered that portfolio full of Andree's glowing youth, and for the moment he felt glad. They would live long
