All of Doug's life passed in review before his sleepless eyes. He could not recall when he had not been shaping his days around Judith. Even when as children they had lived the snarling life of young pups, she had been the center of his universe. He wondered if love came to many men as it had come to him. He had not observed it in any other man in Lost Chief. Perhaps Peter had cared so. Perhaps in the outside world it was not infrequent. But whether it was a common sort of love or not, he could not picture himself without Judith in his life. If he should find her dead, farther down on this ghastly mountainside, he knew that the light and warmth within him would go out and that he never would finish the journey. One by one he went over the steps of the past year that had culminated in this trip over Black Devil Pass. He realized that every step had been the result of his own years of mental conflict. Yet he could not see how he could have failed to take each step as he had taken it. His mind mysteriously refused to present an alternative. And, thinking thus, he was conscious of a sense of spiritual helplessness as if he were being borne on and on by forces quite beyond his control. And there came to him a sudden and shattering conviction that this terrible night of loneliness had been inevitable since the day of his birth. Call it Fate, he told himself, call it Destiny, call it what we might, something stronger than his own will had shaped his days toward this awful expedition. Awful, he thought, not from the physical aspect--he had endured as much in other ways--as from the quality of the events that had brought the expedition about. It was all wrong that Judith should have been in the state of mind that made it possible for her to put herself to such a wild flight. Revolt, the Mormon's wife had said it was. Revolt against what? Surely against something stupendous, something that a man was powerless to help her to free herself from or to bear. Ah, Judith! Judith! Judith all fire, all wistfulness, all strength and beauty! What was he, after all, to hope to claim her, or even having won her, how was he to keep her? How was he to keep within his ken that restless, soaring spirit? What could he give her that would satisfy, and hold her? For the first time in many years, Douglas could have wept; wept for very sadness that Judith should be so lonely and so wistful. How long he sat shivering with his burning eyes on the fire, Douglas did not know. He was roused by a faint cry above the wind. At first he thought it was a coyote. But when it repeated, he started to his feet and concentrated in an agony of attention on the sound. Once more it came, longdrawn, troubled, the howl of a dog. Doug dropped the blankets and strode from the shelter of the trees to deliver a long coo-ee. The wind was against him. There was no response.