The hut into which Ashley descended was like a Greenlander's "iglook," below the surface of the snow. Accident rather than design had given it this Arctic resemblance. As snow upon snow had blocked up its entrance, and reared its white ladders against its walls, and as the strength of its exhausted inmates slowly declined, communication with the outward world was kept up only by a single narrow passage. Excluded from the air, it was close and stifling, but it had a warmth that perhaps the thin blood of its occupants craved more than light or ventilation. A smouldering fire in a wooden chimney threw a faint flicker on the walls. By its light, lying on the floor, were discernible four figures--a young woman and a child of three or four years wrapped in a single blanket, near the fire; nearer the door two men, separately enwrapped, lay apart. They might have been dead, so deep and motionless were their slumbers. Perhaps some fear of this filled the mind of Ashley as he entered, for after a moment's hesitation, without saying a word, he passed quickly to the side of the young woman, and, kneeling beside her, placed his hand upon her face. Slight as was the touch, it awakened her. I know not what subtle magnetism was in that contact, but she caught the hand in her own, sat up, and before the eyes were scarcely opened, uttered the single word-- "Philip!" "Grace--hush!" He took her hand, kissed it, and pointed warningly toward the other sleepers. "Speak low. I have much to say to you." The young girl seemed to be content to devour the speaker with her eyes. "You have come back," she whispered, with a faint smile, and a look that showed too plainly the predominance of that fact above all others in her mind. "I dreamt of you, Philip." "Dear Grace"--he kissed her hand again. "Listen to me, darling! I have come back, but only with the old story--no signs of succour, no indications of help from without! My belief is, Grace," he added, in a voice so low as to be audible only to the quick ear to which it was addressed, "that we have blundered far south of the usual travelled trail. Nothing but a miracle or a misfortune like our own would bring another train this way. We are alone and helpless--in an unknown region that even the savage and brute have abandoned. The only aid we can calculate upon is from within--from ourselves. What that aid amounts to," he continued, turning a cynical eye towards the sleepers, "you know as well as I." She pressed his hand, apologetically, as if accepting the reproach herself, but did not speak.