He put his hand to his head, with the need to touch it and to make it work properly. He had to think of things to do, and how could he do that? His father, for example—what should he do about him? He went a few steps without the door, and tried to consider, looking at the sleeping figure by the fire. The faint glow of the coals made a little ring of dim light. In it he stood, swaying. “Oh my God,” she said, behind him. “You are drunk.” “Li’l bit,” he admitted. “Li’l bit. Not enough to scare a b-baby.” She put this away scornfully. “Scare nothin’,” she said sharply. “Can you keep to the trail? That’s all.” He laughed foolishly. “Tha’s all right,” he repeated, “I can find trail, drunk or sober.” She stood pressing her hands in and out and turning helplessly to the dark. The dark gave her back only the lights of Inch. “There’s nothing else to do,” she said dully. “If you show me the trail, maybe I can keep you on it.” In some indeterminate shame, he went without a word, brought his blanket, and turned again to the hut. “I’ve got a kit,” she said. “It’s got enough to eat. Do you understand? Don’t get anything else. Oh, let’s start, let’s start!” As he emerged, his hand had brushed the feathers of the wood duck. He took it down and slung it fumblingly to his roll of blanket. Less by taking thought than by old instinct, he remembered his cartridge belt, and found and strapped it on. Then he stood hesitating. “Gotta tell ’em,” he suggested, looking at his father. She had shouldered her pack and stood waiting. “Why?” she demanded. “It’ll only be harder for him if they come. This way he won’t know, and he can tell ’em so.” In this there was reason, but not, it seemed, enough reason. The Inger stood trying to recall something pressing on him for remembrance: if not his father, what was it that he must do or fetch, before he left. He put both hands to his head, but in there was only a current and a beating. “There’s s’more to do,” he said indistinctly. Lory Moor stepped toward him and laid her hand briskly on his shoulder, with a boy’s gesture of eager haste. “The trail—the trail!” she said, with authority. “Find us the trail.” Without a word he started, went round the end of the hut, and plunged into the wood, which ran down to the very wall. In a half dozen steps the ascent began. Even by daylight the trail was little more than an irregular line of bent branches and blazed trunks. Since he had finished it, the Inger had taken it a dozen times by daylight with a boy’s delight in a secret way. By night he had never taken it at all. But he had the woodsman’s instinct and, now that his thoughts were stilled or lost in a maze of their own inconsequent making, this secondary consciousness was for a time paramount. He went as a man goes who treads his own ways, and though he went irregularly and sometimes staggeringly, he managed at first to keep to the course that he had taken.