‘How should they brighten, unless Providence sent some luckier wanderers across our track?—not a likely event at this time of year. No, the aspect of our affairs has darkened to the deepest gloom. Geoffrey Hossack is dying of fever.’ ‘Amidst universal cold—strange anomaly!’ said the other, in his hard unpitying voice. ‘But since death seems inevitable for all of us, I’d gladly change lots with your friend—burn with fever—and go out of this world unconscious. It is looking death in the face that tortures me: to lie here, looking into that fire, and calculate the slow but too swift hours that stand between me and—annihilation. _That_ gnaws my vitals.’ Lucius looked down at the strongly-marked passionate face, half in scorn, half in pity. ‘You can see no horizon beyond your grave under these pine-trees,’ he said. ‘You do not look upon this life as an education for the better life that is to succeed it?’ ‘No. I had done with that fable before I was twenty.’ A hard cruel face, with the red fire shining in it—the face of a man who, knowing himself unfit for heaven, was naturally disposed to unbelief in a future, which for this dark soul could only mean expiation. ‘Can you help me to find my way back to the hut?’ Lucius asked, after a meditative pause. ‘Not I. I thought I was a hundred miles from it. I have been wandering in a circle, I suppose.’ ‘Evidently. Where did you leave Kekek-ooarsis?’ The stranger looked at him doubtfully, as if hardly understanding the drift of the question. Lucius repeated it. ‘I don’t know. There is no “where” in this everlasting labyrinth. We disagreed, and parted—somewhere!’ Lucius Davoren’s gaze, wandering idly about that sunken circle in the snow, where every inch of ground was fitfully illuminated by the ruddy glare of the pine-logs, was suddenly attracted by an object that provoked his curiosity—a little heap of bones, half burnt, at the edge of the fire. The flame licked them every now and then, as the wind blew it towards them. ‘You have had a prize, I see,’ he said, pointing to these bones. ‘Biggish game! How did you manage without a gun?’ ‘A knife is sometimes as good as a gun!’ said the other, without looking up. He stretched out his long lean arm as he spoke, and pushed the remainder of his prey farther into the fire. In a moment—before the other was aware—Lucius had leaped down into the circle, and was on his knees, dragging the bones back out of the fire with his naked hands. ‘Assassin! devil!’ he cried, turning to the stranger with a look of profoundest loathing: ‘I thought as much. These are human bones. This is the fore-arm of a man.’ ‘That’s a lie,’ the other answered coolly. ‘I snared a wolf, and stabbed him with my clasp-knife.’ ‘I have not worked in the dissecting-room for nothing,’ said Lucius quietly. ‘Those are human bones. You have staved off death by murder.’